Growing Up

As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with how things work. As a child, my favorite toys proved to be household items when they would break. Why? Because what could be more fun than taking something apart to see how it’s made, or figure out how it works? Better yet, let’s see if you can put it all back together again!

I used to love taking apart mechanical clocks, old phone handsets and transistor radios when I was a kid. And, yes, I realize I am telling on my age here!

I was always fascinated with all those small intricate working parts, especially in the timepieces, that would make it work like… well, clockwork! The mini speakers in the phone handsets, microphones, tiny little soldered wires, transmitters and receivers.. it was all so intriguing.

Transistor radios were the best. For me, it was like finding buried treasure when you would find that little crystal receiver piece inside! I even learned how to build one my own.

Nowadays, it’s so easy to pick up parts at hobbyist stores. Back then, I would just dig most of them out of old non-working items.

My dad was an engineer so being science-oriented in general and a physics enthusiast just kind of came with the territory. We always had an odd conglomerate of items around the house and a workshop for just those kind of projects.

Magnetic coils, 9 Volt and lantern batteries, hobby motors, diodes, breadboards, capacitors, resistors, electric propellers, small dc motors… you name it, we probably had it stashed somewhere around the house or in the shed. And what we didn’t have, most of the time, my dad could make in his tool and dye shop at work.

Fermilab

As I grew, so did my interests. I progressed from wanting to know how simple every day items worked, to how the universe around us works. My love of astronomy and space science eventually evolved into the study of the physics of the universe at a quantum level, especially high-energy theoretical particle physics.

As a child growing up, I was always fascinated with the then-largest particle accelerator at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, the Tevatron. My grandfather worked there and filled my head with such mind-blowing ideas about the experiments that went on there. [Take a 360° tour of the FERMILAB here.]

CERN and the Large hadron Collider [LHC]

In 2007, a new era dawned when CERN built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at its facility in Geneva, Switzerland, on the border of Switzerland and France. It is now the largest particle accelerator in the world.

It launched for the first time in September of 2008. This particle accelerator consists of two tubes underground 17 miles or 27 km in length. The tubes are super-cooled to 1.9 Kelvin, or -271.25°C/456.25°F), a temperature slightly cooler than the vacuum of outer space, which is 2.7 Kelvin, or 270.45°C/454.81°F.

Particles are accelerated in a beam to nearly the speed of light and induced to travel in opposite directions along a path in two seperate tubes by supercondconducting electromagnets. They are then made to collide at certain specified points along the path where four particle detectors (ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb) are located and data is recorded.

When the LHC first became operable, I was obsessed! Then began a number of run ups and shut downs… very long shutdowns.

Shutdowns

On one of the initial runs, the LHC was shut down for a faulty electrical connection which caused one of the super-cooled magnets to warm, allowing more than 6,000 tons of super-cooled helium to escape. The helium had been used to cool the magnets. This, in turn, caused several magnets to break, leading to significant damage and expensive repairs.

Not even a year later, in July of 2009, two vacuum leaks were found. This required even more repairs and another inevitable delay.

It was in November of 2009 before the LHC lit up again. Finally, some real work could be accomplished!

Then, the LHC then shut down in February of 2013 (Long Shutdown 1) for two years for upgrades and extensive reconditioning. They were once again operational in April of 2015.

In December of 2018, CERN announced that they would shut down the LHC for an extended hiatus (Long Shutdown 2) to perform necessary upgrades.

So when will the LHC at CERN reopen?

Plans to resume research are scheduled right now for the spring of 2021.

So, what is a hadron anyway?

So what is a hadron? [As in “large hadron collider…”]

A hadron can refer to any number of combinations of subatomic particles and their antiparticles including baryons and mesons, held together by gluons. These, in turn, are composed of different combinations of quarks. For instance, protons and neutrons are baryons, and therefore, are hadrons.

Hmmm… wait a minute, then, what is a quark?

There was a time when people thought that atoms were the smallest particle that made up all matter. Then came the discovery of the nucleus of the atom, which contained even smaller particles such as protons and neutrons. Also, electrons orbit around and outside the nucleus.

Then, in 1964, it was theorized that an even smaller particle existed. Enter the quark.

Basically, quarks are the smallest known particles in our universe (right now anyway!).

[Note: There have been models developed as early as 1974 regarding preons and point particles, which are theorized to be sub-components of quarks and leptons, but these are theoretical].

There are six flavors of quarks: up and down, strange and charm, and top and bottom. In 1968, the discovery became official.

These quarks combine in different combinations to produce different hadrons with different electrical charges. For instance, protons and neutrons are made of 3 quarks. A proton is made up of two “up” quarks and one “down” quark. A neutron is made up of one “up” and two “down” quarks.

It’s important to remember, however, that size and weight can be very different. For instance, while quarks are smaller, leptons are heavier.

Wait! Leptons… What?

The truth is, there are a number of recognized fundamental particles which are believed to be the building blocks of the universe. Remember that a fundamental particle is defined not by size or mass, but as an elementary particle that is no longer divisible.

There are the fermions, which are fundamental particles that make up matter (quarks, leptons and their anitparticles) and bosons, which are energy-carrying fundamental particles (gauge bosons and Higgs boson). A photon is an example of a boson. All bosons have energy, but not all bosons have mass.

So, since an electron is a lepton, by default, it is actually considered an elementary particle since it is a lepton. You see, leptons come in six flavors: electron, muon, and tau and their associated neutrinos, or electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino.

Whew! I know, it’s a lot. But isn’t it just endlessly fascinating? And to think, we’ve only scratched the surface!

I mean, how can you not be fascinated with it all??

Enter the Large Hadron Collider.

What exactly is a Collider?

As discussed previously, a collider is a type of particle accelerator which directs two beams of particles at nearly the speed of light and purposely and in a controlled manner collides those two beams at specified points for scientific research.

There is so much information and breakthrough data that has been collected at CERN, but that is a whole other article. For more information on CERN as an organization and to learn more about their history, please visit their website here: CERN

There is a vast amount of education, videos you can access, and lectures you can listen to, all free and online at their website. From the Standard Model to Supersymmetry, and everything in between, they cover all subjects including Physics, Engineering, Computing, Experiments, and more.

You can also visit THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER to find out more information regarding specific experiments associated with the world’s largest particle accelerator.

Stuck at home in 2020 with nothing exciting to do? Let’s go to Geneva!

Take A Virtual Tour to CERN right now!

Also, please visit the FERMILAB to find out more about the history behind the world’s largest particle accelerator before the Large Hadron Collider was built at CERN. The Fermilab has a fascinating history and a lot of educational tools online. Remember, too, if you are ever in the area, the Fermilab is open to the public for tours. It’s located in Batavia, Illinois, right outside Chicago (my hometown!). It’s an opportunity that should not be missed.

Please stay tuned for more articles on astronomy, cosmology, high energy theoretical particle physics and space science! Until then, here’s wishing you dark skies!

And if you live near too-urban areas like I do right now, unfortunately, then make sure you make your own opportunities to get out there and find those dark skies near you, whatever that means: driving an hour into a nearby forest and finding an open meadow, traversing the everglades [bring mosquito spray and an ice vest with you! :)], or travel 20 miles out on the water and find the silence that is not even a though inside the city.

Whatever you do, get out there!

Continue reading “What is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and Why is it so Fascinating?”