Google has this week published new images to its Google Street View service that reveal the Large Hadron Collider in all its glory, allowing you to experience a virtual tour of the site from the comfort of your browser.
The Large Hadron Collider Street View images reveal the inner workings of the highest-energy particle collider ever made and which is considered to be one of the engineering milestones of mankind.
The Large Hadron Collider was originally built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries and was finished in 2008.
Construction and Design
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was constructed in a tunnel 27 kilometers or 17 miles in circumference, and is 175 meters or 574 feet beneath the ground at the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. The tunnel was originally excavated for the Large Electron-Positron Collider, which was the LHC’s predecessor. The LHC’s design allows it to accelerate two high-energy particle beams in opposite directions and then collide them at four interaction points. These collisions are observed by detectors that record the resulting particle interactions.
The LHC’s primary goal is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics, including the existence of the Higgs boson and the properties of dark matter. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 was one of the most significant achievements of the LHC, confirming the last unverified part of the Standard Model of particle physics.
Scientific Impact and Future Prospects
The Large Hadron Collider has had a profound impact on the field of particle physics. Beyond the discovery of the Higgs boson, the LHC has provided valuable data that has helped scientists understand the fundamental forces of nature. The experiments conducted at the LHC have also explored the conditions of the early universe, moments after the Big Bang, by recreating the high-energy environment that existed at that time.
The LHC is not just a single experiment but a complex facility that hosts multiple experiments, each designed to explore different aspects of particle physics. These include ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb, among others. Each of these experiments has its own unique detector and research focus, contributing to a broad range of scientific inquiries.
Looking to the future, the LHC is undergoing upgrades to increase its luminosity, which will allow it to produce more collisions and gather more data. This High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is expected to start operations in the late 2020s and will significantly enhance the collider’s capabilities. Scientists hope that the HL-LHC will help answer some of the remaining questions in particle physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the possibility of extra dimensions.
To learn more and view the new Large Hadron Collider Street View images, jump over to the Google Street View website.
Source: Register
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