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LHC_Homepage. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.

LHC_Homepage

It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. 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. Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beams around the accelerator. All the controls for the accelerator, its services and technical infrastructure are housed under one roof at the CERN Control Centre.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big Bang' 8 November 2010Last updated at 11:12 ET By Katia Moskvitch Science reporter, BBC News Dr David Evans: "From conception to design and building this, it's taken about 20 years.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big Bang'

" The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. The scientists working at the enormous machine achieved the unique conditions on 7 November. The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than at the centre of the Sun. The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva. Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation. Continue reading the main story Proton collisions could help spot the elusive Higgs boson particle and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry. 'Strong force' Hunt for Higgs Particle Enters Endgame. By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazine Bill Murray is a man with secrets.

Hunt for Higgs Particle Enters Endgame

Along with a handful of other scientists based at CERN, Europe's particle-physics facility near Geneva, Switzerland, Murray is one of the few researchers with access to the latest data on the Higgs boson -- the most sought-after particle in physics. Looking at his laptop, he traces a thin black line that wiggles across a shaded area at the centre of a graph. This is the fruit of his summer's labours. "It's interesting, actually, looking at this again," he muses. Despite Murray's coyness, there are few places left for the Higgs to hide. At a conference in Paris on November 18, teams from ATLAS and the CMS experiments presented a combined analysis that wipes out a wide swathe of potential masses for the Higgs particle. Analysis of the very latest data from this autumn--which Murray isn't yet ready to share -- will scour the range that remains.

Waiting for God If there is no Higgs, then what? The Undiscovered Particles on the Edge of Known Physics. Homepage - Large Hadron Collider.