The café began with a short talk in which Professor Mackintosh outlined the three main reasons for building large particle accelerators, in particular the Large Hadron Collider – to provide energy for the collisions between like charges (which repel); to provide enough momentum for the particles in order to see subatomic particles in finer detail; and to provide enough energy for the formation of new particles (which is exactly how every atom in our bodies is made – except for hydrogen).
The main reason for the LHC’s existence is to prove (or disprove) the existence of the Higgs Boson, a particle which gives other particles mass, and is thus a fundamental basis of gravity. However, to produce this particle so that it is visible to physicists at the LHC, the energy required is phenomenal – the particles would need to be accelerated through 200 billion volts. In order for this to be achieved, they circulate through the LHC’s ring structure, gaining more momentum with each revolution.
After another feeding frenzy at the snack table, we returned to our seats for a Q&A session. Questions ranged from “How does tunnelling work” (which resulted in Professor Mackintosh writing the Schrodinger equation on the board to a room of perplexed people) to “Are people coming back from the future to sabotage the LHC so that we don’t end up destroying ourselves?”
One of the key points which was highlighted regarding the cost involved in building the LHC, is that projects such as this inspire the next generation of physicists, and fuel the influx of physicists into universities and industry in the future, where they will contribute further to solving some of our greatest mysteries.
