LHC: What is it? | What is its importance for Humanity?

in #engineering6 years ago

Since 2 days ago the fellows at @steemstem went inside the LHC (still waiting for some good pics :D), I thought it would be a good idea to share a post with the community explaining this place and its importance to all humanity.

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What is the LCH?


The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a mega machine of 16.777 miles in circumference, with four colossal detective chambers, each one so big that you can put the Eiffel Tower inside it with plenty of space left. With a cost of $ 8,000 million dollars, it was built near the city of Geneva in Switzerland.

The goals the scientists had when making the LHC were ambitious, because they wanted a machine that could "observe" what happens at scales ten billion times smaller than one millionth of a meter, because with this type of information we would be able to understand what we call "matter", what it is composed of, and if it interacts with other much smaller dimensions which for now, cannot be detected by us (just as predicted by the Superstring theory, which goal is to unify the Theory of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics). The plan was to achieve this by colliding particles that will travel at almost the speed of light around the huge ring of the machine. In other words, the LHC was created to allow us to take a look inside the very soul of the universe.

And what does this incredibly powerful machine do?

It has 4 experiments

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Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to ‑271.3°C – a temperature colder than outer space. For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets, as well as to other supply services.

Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beams around the accelerator. These include 1232 dipole magnets 15 metres in length which bend the beams, and 392 quadrupole magnets, each 5–7 metres long, which focus the beams. Just prior to collision, another type of magnet is used to "squeeze" the particles closer together to increase the chances of collisions. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway. | Source

According to the scientists at the time, even if the results were different than expected, we would either way learn a lot about the universe, about what it is made of, and about the theories we have about this, because as an example they cited the fact that the Theory of Relativity arose just after the results of something that was believed to exist in the universe called "the Ether" were in the end negative. In other words, there was nothing to lose since the beginning.

This machine creates such a massive amount of information, that just about being able to store (in order for later on be able to study it) a very small part of the data that the LHC actually generates requires tremendous work, and even then, we talk about the equivalent of a dual layer blueray of 50 GigaBytes of data every 50 seconds aprox, information that must be stored somewhere for further analysis, and in order to handle it, a high speed network was created worldwide that connects the center of the LHC with hundreds of scientific, governmental and educational institutions from all over the world to store the necessary information that results from the experiments.

This image shows in a perfect way the complexity of such a challenge.

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On top of all this hardware, it was created another level of globally distributed software that allows a scientist sitting in a terminal anywhere in the world to study the data stored in all these institutions.

CERN itself explains it:

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) – a distributed computing infrastructure arranged in tiers – gives a community of over 8000 physicists near real-time access to LHC data. The Grid builds on the technology of the World Wide Web. | Source.

In other words, this has been a monumental work of truly epic proportions.

Even some public LCH data has been used by scientists that don't work on the project to make discoveries.

Now, I would like to write a few words about the importance of this machine for everyone, which I hope some of you can appreciate.

It is important that many are aware that creations like this should always be considered something to celebrate, because these achievements symbolically represents the apex of all the scientific achievements of humanity so far, it is with innovations and creations like this one that our race can move forward and accomplish things that might seem impossible in the first place. As I have told on several of my articles, I think our future can be truly spectacular, and we have everything we need to make it so.

I think that many people look for a sense of wonder and amazement in all kinds of superstitions, writings and beliefs without any proper proof, and say that such things, even without seeing them nor touching them, or even actually knowing if they are real or not, make them feel full of spiritual satisfaction or happiness.

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The LHC provides data that help us understand what happened close after the Big Bang

But it should be accomplishments like the LHC the ones that fill everyone of us with total joy and a real sense of realization. Thousand of years of researches by people of all types and origins, who little by little have put their 2 cents to eventually accomplish something of this huge proportions, where it is finally possible to be able to take a great step in the understanding of our Universe, which I believe is our ultimate frontier, to be able to master space and our own reality.

From Aristotle and his researches in the natural sciences, to Galileo for creating one of the first modern telescopes , and Newton with his investigations into a whole range of subjects like mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy, leaving the foundations for classical mechanics, explaining law of gravity and the laws of motion, Einstein and his revolutionary Theory of Relativity.

The LHC is the ultimate result of millions of hours discussing, millions of frustrations, ideas, theories and calculations, millions of errors and successes, of people made of flesh and blood like you and me, and whose intellect and perseverance has resulted in this monumental work of science and engineering.

This, in my opinion, is what a real miracle actually is: Something that seemed impossible, but thanks to humanity’s work, can now be seen, heard, touched, felt and admired by everyone of us, just as the @steemstem fellows did 2 days ago.

I remember some comments a few days or weeks ago saying that machines are things without feelings, but I assure you that behind this machine there are more feelings than all of those congregated in a stadium, praising and waiting for random things to happen, instead of rolling up their sleeves and start working in making something possible, tangible, and useful for themselves and for humanity.

There is a very touching answer (when analyzed in depth) Robert Wilson (the mind behind the idea of the LHC) gave to a Senator when asked about how could these researches help America’s security, the dialog went as follow:

Senator Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?
Robert Wilson: No sir, I don’t believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture... It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about... It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.
Source

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Conclusion


Our potential is limitless, and with enough time and dedication what today seems impossible, tomorrow can be a reality. Something as immense as the LHC would be unthinkable only 50 years ago (except for a handful of scientists probably), and by now this project already has almost 10 years working!

Technology and science goes hand in hand and they are both advancing at an exponential rate, who knows what new discoveries are waiting for us in the years to come, but what I am sure is that we still have a lot of excitement and amazement to feel in our lives, especially now more than ever.

Today, the LHC is probably the greatest machine created for science investigations, but tomorrow a better one will appear, even China announced last year their plans to become the leader of this sector, which means, the speed at which things advanced will accelerate even more, bringing us more knowledge to all, and ultimately, improving our lives.


What is the most important thing the LHC has discovered? (short answer : the already famous Higgs Boson)

Is it worth it to invest such a huge amount of money into scientific researches? (short answer: Yes)

Both questions will be discussed in future posts, stay tuned.



If you can't visit CERN's laboratories in person but still want to see them, you can do it digitally, because luckily they have been working along Google, it is available here.

I leave you with this video from 10 years ago (no HD) where some scientists explain the LHC while doing some fine rap.




References

CERN - computing
biographyonline
history - testimony
CERN - LHC
stanford.edu
cosmosup - facts about LHC

Image sources

1 , 2, 4 and 5 , 3 , 6




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Being A SteemStem Member

Quite on topic for the SteemSTEM trip. Great read @dedicatedguy!

Wow, I learned a lot from this, thanks!

Also I just have to mention that your post overall comes across as very high quality, with excellent formatting and layout! So: Good job!

I am glad you like it! Thank you for your kind words!

wow, it's kind of academic !

That Robert Wilson fellow really knows how to talk... instead of worrying about the security of a country we should be worrying about fixing the problems of the world and after that advancing into space!! We need world together not divided by countries, we need a world that works for the good of making and not to destroy each other!
I really wanted to come to LHC with steemstem, but unfortunately i only joined steemit this January so still no funds to do it, maybe next year xD i hope next year instead of LHC we go to SpaceX, I would sell my own body in the street corner to get some STEEM to go to SpaceX

In my case I think we should take care of both, since there are enough resources to cover every responsibility. Protection is important, but only if what is being protected is actually valuable.

SpaceX would be crazy to visit indeed! Perhaps we could leave Musk a message asking him why he send his car to spend eternity in space?

Why?? Because it's fun xD! That man is grown man with a child-like mentality!
We actually talked about this the other day in steemstem chat, the US for example could spend less on the defense of their country and actually give a little more to NASA and other organizations to better help the world...

Remember all the technophobes and doomsday nuts freaking when this thing got turned on.

"Aaaarg! their trying to make a blackhole they will kill us all."

Best one I ever read was that it was really secret tech to open an actual stargate

Hahahahaha yeah! I remember people being scared of a black hole eating us 😂

LHC is truly amazing! It's almost hard to believe that we have such powerful technology for 10 years now.
While machines have no feelings, I agree that there were a lot of feelings behind the makings of those machines.
It's interesting to see what technologies we will have in the near future!

Oh I know what it is, it's that device that can potentially destroy the whole planet according to some tin foil wearing geeks :D

Exactly the same device haha!

And 10 years later here we are, still alive. Either way, I doubt those “tin foil wearing geeks” as you call them would end up recognizing their mistake.

They are probably still telling nonsenses about a new subjects 😅

Cheers mate!

Haven't you heard? The Earth's flat :P

This is the best post within the Higgs field today.

Thanks! I appreciate it!

The scale of this project is crazy... I wonder what results they will come back with after all the testing, really an amazing work of cooperation. Awesome write up, explaining some of it, I didn't know anything about the data storage

The most important result was the confirmation of the Higgs boson, confirming our current laws of pshycis as correct.

I'm intrigued by your post. I had heard about this project but over the years since, I had forgotten about it. I'm curious to know more about its results so I will look into it further. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Thanks for sharing your previous article. I agree that we should invest in scientific discoveries, and I also recognize that presumptions have limited our knowledge of science. However, I also believe that it is just as easy for presumptions to limit our knowledge of the Divine. In this spirit, I like to see progress in science because it helps to eliminate the errors mankind has imposed upon Truth and Reality.

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