On September 10th in Science History, a significant event took place in 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, was first powered up. The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, designed to explore the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces that govern their interactions.
The construction of the LHC was a monumental scientific and engineering endeavor. It took over a decade to build, involved collaboration among thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries, and cost approximately $4.75 billion. The collider is housed in a 27-kilometer (16.8-mile) circular tunnel, located 100 meters (328 feet) underground.
The primary goal of the LHC is to recreate conditions similar to those that existed just after the Big Bang, allowing scientists to study the early universe and potentially discover new particles and phenomena. By accelerating and colliding beams of protons or heavy ions at nearly the speed of light, the LHC can produce incredibly high energies, enabling researchers to probe the smallest scales of matter ever explored.
One of the most significant discoveries made using the LHC came in 2012 when scientists confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs boson is believed to be responsible for giving other particles their mass, and its discovery was a major milestone in our understanding of the universe.
The first powering up of the Large Hadron Collider on September 10, 2008, marked the beginning of a new era in particle physics research. Since then, the LHC has continued to make groundbreaking discoveries and has pushed the boundaries of our knowledge about the fundamental nature of matter and the universe.
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
