[The CERN and the megascience].
In this work we analyse the biggest particle accelerator in the world: the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The ring shaped tunnel is 27 km long and it is buried over 110 meters underground, straddling the border betwen France and Switzerland at the CERN laboratory near Geneva. Its mission is to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the Big-Bang and to look for the hypothesised Higgs particle. The LHC will accelerate protons near the speed of the light and collide them head on at an energy of to 14 TeV (1 TeV = 10(12) eV). Keeping such high energy in the proton beams requires enormous magnetic fields which are generated by superconducting electromagnets chilled to less than two degrees above absolute zero. It is expected that LHC will be inaugurated in summer 2007.
Aguilar Peris
José
J
D005060:Europe; D049673:History, 20th Century; D010315:Particle Accelerators / Q000266:history*