It’s good news for those keen on particle physics, but bad news for those who thought we’d narrowly escaped the world’s end: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is back on track!
The LHC is a huge atom smasher, located near Geneva, Switzerland, which scientists hope will give us some info on how the universe began and what it’s made of. Unfortunately, the particle accelerator had barely got going before it malfunctioned on 19th September 2008, grinding to a halt just nine days after it had been switched on. An electrical glitch had caused the LHC’s super-cooled plumbing to burst, resulting in a helium leak that damaged the machine’s magnets.
Yesterday, the last of the 53 replacement magnets was lowered into the underground tunnel that houses the LHC. This means that the scientists are on target for restarting the particle accelerator in the autumn, once they have installed the new systems that will prevent this type of problem from happening again.
But there’s no pleasing some people! The LHC has been dubbed the ‘Doomsday Machine’ because there is a small chance that it will create microscopic black holes, a fact that led to some wild speculation that our planet would be vacuumed into oblivion. But this is highly improbable. Scientists have made calculations showing that although black holes may be created by the LHC, they will most likely be too minuscule and short-lived to obliterate any significant amount of matter.
On a lighter note, this is an ideal time to post a neat and nerdy LHC rap video! This simple explanation of what the LHC actually does is one of the best I’ve ever come across, as well as being one of the most entertaining. I’m sure that many of you have watched this before, but I think it’s worth seeing just once more!