Big Bang Experiment(Particle accelerator)- key to understanding our universe

  Particle Accelerators – key to understanding our universe

Stephen Hawking says particle accelerators are the closest mankind got to time machine! What are these particle accelerators? How do they work? Why are they so important?

Particle accelerators as the name suggests are used to accelerate particles (such as protons, electrons), they basically increase speed of particles and collide them with desired targets under intent observation to unlock properties of universe and create states that were present moments after big bang.  The concept of accelerators were introduced in 1930s, cyclotron being the first and basic one. There are more than 30000 operating accelerators around the world.

How do they work?

Particle accelerators aka atom smashers vary in sizes, the smallest being 5 inches in diameter and largest being 27 kms in circumference. World’s largest atom smasher is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it is beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva, Switzerland, and the famous big bang experiment was done here. CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research which houses the LHC.

Working of LHC (an particle accelerator)

Hydrogen atoms are fed into source chamber of LHC and then stripped off their electrons, as a hydrogen atom has 1 electron and 1 proton; they are now ionized hydrogen or Protons. Protons as we know are positively charged and electric field is applied such that these protons are repelled and hence accelerate (gain speed).

In the 1^st stage these packets of protons are travelling in a linear accelerator and reaching 1/3^rd speed of light.

2^nd stage is a booster; it is a circular accelerator and is 167m in circumference. Packets of proton are divided into even smaller packets to increase intensity and are distributed among rings of circular accelerator. Powerful magnets are used to bend the beam of protons so as to circulate in the ring; protons reach 91.6% speed of light. All the divided packets are combined and flung into proton synchrotron.    

3^rd stage is proton synchrotron (it is a larger circular accelerator), it is 628m in circumference and protons reach to 99.9% speed of light here. A transition stage is reached as a proton cannot exceed speed of light as formulated by Einstein’s theory.

     E=MC² plays a vital role here- Energy supplied henceforth is converted into mass of proton, as a result they get heavier not faster, protons in synchrotron are 25 times heavier than a normal proton at rest.

4^th stage is a super proton synchrotron; it is a huge ring of 7kms in circumference. Soon injected protons will be at precisely desired velocity to launch them finally into orbit of the LHC

In LHC

It has a circumference of 27 kms and contains 2 vacuum pipes;. Packets of protons are systematically injected into these vacuum metal pipes in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions in order for them to collide at specified detector junctions. Protons finally have energy of 7000Tev (10¹²electron volt) of energy and 7000 times heavier than at rest. Magnetic fields needed to bend these high energy beams is enormous, it is however achieved by maintaining temperatures colder than outer space inside metal pipes of LHC, this cold temperature allows for superconductivity(no or least resistance). 4 detectors cabins are positioned to track the impact and elementary particles (quarks, gluons etc.) produced in these super high energy (more than 14000Tev) collisions. Detectors are connected to super computers to analyze the particle tracks and the observations made are anticipated to give us insight into birth of our universe. Particle accelerators are also used for hunt on ‘God Particle’ (Higgs boson)

Time Travel through accelerator as said by hawking:

This is a hypothetical situation and not anywhere close to reality (we are faced by many physical restrictions). Imagine injecting a human instead of particle accelerated to such high speeds. When our human is out of ring, he/she is going to look years younger than the rest of us cause of time dilation from special relativity. Similar effect on protons in accelerator and their time runs slowly than ours.