To get those protons up to speed, LHC engineers had to build 17 miles’ worth of the coldest, emptiest place in the universe
Posted 09.10.2008 at 12:42 pm
9 Comments
Large Hadron Collider
Kevin Hand
The purpose of the LHC is to get lots of protons moving very, very fast. The magnet system is the core piece of technology that makes this happen. More than 1,200 magnet sections, each weighing 10 tons, bend proton beams through vacuum pipes around the 17-mile-long underground tunnel near Geneva. Since these protons are going so fast—99.9999991 percent of the speed of light—superconducting coils of niobium and titanium must produce a magnetic field that’s about 200,000 times as strong as Earth’s to bend them. A power supply feeds these magnets with 12,000 amps of current, and a constant flow of liquid helium keeps the entire machine just 1.9 degrees above absolute zero. The conditions are both colder and emptier than deep space.
See all of PopSci's coverage of the Large Hadron Collider at popsci.com/lhc.
9 Comments
To comment, please Login.
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 2013: American Energy Independence
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Science
- Scientists Create First Cloned Human Embryo
- Dear Schools: Stop Treating Science-Curious Kids Like Criminals
- State Drops Charges Against High School Student Arrested For Science Experiment
- Mexican Cartels Control Pot Farms As Far North As Washington State
- Buzz Aldrin Wants To Send People On A One-Way Trip To Mars
- Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist
- Space Tourism's Black Carbon Problem
- What Modern Humans Can Learn From The Neanderthals' Extinction
- Untouched For The Last Billion Years, Water In Canadian Mine Holds Ingredients For Life
- How Do You Make A Painkiller Addiction-Proof?
Most Emailed
Science
- The Week In Numbers: Fire In Space, The First Cloned Human Embryo, And More
- 8 Of The Year's Most Oddly Gorgeous Science Images
- 8 Of The Year's Most Oddly Gorgeous Science Images
- A Zombie Worm And Other Amazing Images From This Week
- A Zombie Worm And Other Amazing Images From This Week
- Cambrian Fossil With Scissor-Like Claws Is Named For Johnny Depp
- First American Mission To Sample An Asteroid Gets Green Light
- High School Students Devise More Accurate Climate Modeling Method
- Wanna Know How You're Going To Survive The Apocalypse?
- This Bacterium Can Do Division, Compute Logarithms And Take Square Roots
Most Viewed
Science
- The Week In Numbers: Fire In Space, The First Cloned Human Embryo, And More
- 8 Of The Year's Most Oddly Gorgeous Science Images
- 8 Of The Year's Most Oddly Gorgeous Science Images
- A Zombie Worm And Other Amazing Images From This Week
- A Zombie Worm And Other Amazing Images From This Week
- Cambrian Fossil With Scissor-Like Claws Is Named For Johnny Depp
- First American Mission To Sample An Asteroid Gets Green Light
- High School Students Devise More Accurate Climate Modeling Method
- Wanna Know How You're Going To Survive The Apocalypse?
- This Bacterium Can Do Division, Compute Logarithms And Take Square Roots
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Rebecca Boyle | Email
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
This technology is just mind boggling that we are even able to achieve this. I never had any idea that we where even capable something at almost speed of light and keeping it under control, or even producing that strong of a magnetic field. Just mind boggling...
Think of the possibilities of particle accelerators! Bringing spaceships up to speed with low fuel consumption, an improved rail gun... we got the internet from CERN, just imagine what we could get from this. Google also changed their home page, take a look.
Dustin H
I'm just as excited as the rest of you. Imagine the possibilities. We are entering a new era of human discovery. We are no longer concerned with the physically observable. We have moved on, we are now looking at the very fabric of the universe. The very essence of all matter and energy.
This seems like the typical secret government project...except not secret!
"...we got the internet from CERN, just imagine what we could get from this..." - Dustin2127
Actually the internet was invented by DARPA (Google ARPANET). The French don't deserve credit for that. :)
@Atela: I belive he means we got modern webpages from CERN. The first ever webserver was a nextcube at CERN. DARPA developed the communications protocols.
I thought Al Gore invented the internet....?
So I got one main question: Although all this is really amazing, purely for OCD reasons, what is the actual speed that these particles will be achieving. I have read that it will be %99.997, %99.99, %99.99998, and now %99.9999991. All I would like to know is the actual speed.
sonny beetches
to j3toler: partial speed in the LHC is 186,247.9 MPS.