The Large Hadron Collider hasn't killed us all yet. So we gonna pimp this bitch and try again....
CERN begins LHC upgrade, to hopefully ‘change our understanding of the universe’
Following the discovery of what appears to be the Higgs boson, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has been shut down so that it can be upgraded. If all goes the plan, the upgrades will almost double the power of the LHC, enabling the particle accelerator to carry out the second part of its primary mission: proving or disproving the existence of supersymmetry.
The LHC consists of a ring tunnel that is 17 miles (27km) in circumference, up to a depth of 175 meters (574ft) below the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Inside the tunnel are two beamlines, each carrying a proton beam that travel in opposite directions around the ring. The beams intersect at four points, where the proton beams are smashed together, producing oodles of data that is then analyzed by the ATLAS and CMS particle detectors. Depending on the strength of the beams, different kinds of collisions occur, and different subatomic particles are produced.
The proton beams are kept on their circular path with the help of 1,624 superconducting electromagnets, most of which weigh more than 27 tonnes. The magnets, which are made of niobium-titanium, are kept at -271.25 Celcius (1.9 Kelvin) with the help of 96 tonnes of liquid helium; the LHC is the largest cryogenic facility in the world, by some margin.
Up until its planned shutdown, each of the LHC’s proton beams had an energy of 4 TeV (teraelectronvolts), resulting in a total collision energy of 8 TeV. After the upgrade, each beam will operate at 6.5 TeV, for a combined collision energy of 13 TeV — more than six times the power of any previous particle accelerator. To achieve this upgrade, according to the BBC, CERN is replacing 10,000 connections, installing 5,000 insulation systems, and performing 10,170 leak tests and 18,000 electrical tests. Some of the magnets will also be tested or replaced. In total, the upgrade will cost ~$105 million, and should be completed by early 2015.
Some critics claim that CERN is throwing good money after bad, as this upgrade is actually more of a repair. The original LHC design spec, as it was completed in 2008, should’ve been capable of 7 TeV proton beams (14 TeV collisions). Due to an accident just after it was turned on, though, an electrical fault led to six tonnes of liquid helium exploding into the tunnels, causing significant damage and an extensive repair period. In the four years since, the physicists haven’t taken the beams past 4 TeV, for fear of blowing another gasket.
Having found a Higgs boson (not necessarily the Higgs boson), though — one of the LHC’s primary goals — it is now a lot easier for CERN to justify the long shutdown. In essence, when the LHC switches back on in 2015, it will finally be performing at a level that should’ve been possible back in 2008.
With the LHC at full power, the scientific community will try to confirm that they have actually found the Higgs boson, and after that they will continue the search for proof of supersymmetry — the particle accelerator’s other primary goal. ”The LHC is more than just a one trick pony,” ATLAS project leader Pippa Wells tells the BBC. “It wasn’t designed to find just the Higgs. We hope to find something completely new that will change our understanding of the Universe. We are on the threshold of finding many more new particles.” In essence, supersymmetry is a theory that postulates that there are a lot more particles out there, in the TeV energy range, that would fill in some of the gaps left by the Standard Model. In the supersymmetrical version of the Standard Model we would need to double the number of elementary particles, as none of the existing particles (gluons, photons, electrons, etc.) could be superpartners of each other.
So far, going by observations made in late 2012, it doesn’t look very good for supersymmetry — but really, that’s what makes the LHC so darn exciting: Not even the world’s most eminent particle physicists have any idea what the Large Hadron Collider will find at higher energy levels.