Want adventure?! Let's go to CERN!

Most of you have probably already heard about the CERN. For those who haven't, it doesn't mean Certainly Enormous Reason to Obey. Nah. It stands for Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, yes, it's in french. It means European Center for Nuclear Research.

This adventure started in 1954 between France, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Norway, and Sweden (now 21 countries are part of it) and billions Euros were spend during those years. Ok...you may think...lots of big words. And now what.

Well, I know humans have walked on the Moon and even sent stuff to Mars. But the CERN is from far one of the most exciting human adventure. It is the largest particle accelerator in the World. Yes you heard me, in the whole world !

Now, you may be like...so, how big is it ?

Well let me tell you right now !

It's a 27 km (16 miles) ring located 100m (328 feet) underground between Switzerland and France.

                                           everything is 100m underground

Like you take a lift to go down there ! And then you can skaterboard for like hours.

                                                 

                                                              parts of the ring

So remember we said that particles are hella small. So why do we need something that is that big.

What is the whole purpose of that gigantic installation ?

Without getting in detail let's take a quick look one of the most famous equation in physics. I name one of Einstein's equations: E = mc^2.

What does it tell us ? It tells us that energy (E) and matter (m) are kinda the same (c^2 is the speed of light squared...but let's forget about it now). So the more energy I have, the more matter I can create.

                                                                  Swag Einstein!

Now the next question is, how do I create energy ?!

Let's take an analogy : Do you feel like you have more energy when you run or when you stay at home watching TV ? I hope you do when you run...okay then you tired...but I mean, when you are running you feel energy right ?

It's kinda the same for particles. They have more energy when they are « running » and by that I mean when they are moving very fast.

                                                                   Run Baby run

So let's brainstorm: if we want to create lots of matter (aka particles) we need lots of energy which we can get by having other particles moving very fast. Here we are. This is the whole concept of the CERN. It is a particle accelerator where particles are accelerated so that they carry lots of energy and this energy can be converted into other particles.

And the particles that are accelerated are..protons. Remember. Protons are particles you find in an atome's nucleus.

Now let's focus on the following point : How can we accelerate particles?

I mean, it's not like we're gonna tell them to run, and then they're gonna run. No, they don't really listen to us... But remember when you were a kid and were playing with magnets. When you bring a magnet close to another one the second one usually rushes to the first one or gets away for in. In both case you created a movement of the second magnet without touching it.

                                                                       This kid got it

At the CERN there are hundreds of huge magnets alongside the ring. Those magnets make protons move faster and faster and faster... And the bigger the ring the faster you can accelerate protons.

Now, we are not really interested in protons since we know them (yes we do). We want to create wierd and unseen particles. So we need to convert the energy carried by those protons into matter. To do so, we are going to make them collide. What happens at CERN is that actually two beams of protons are created, accelerated on opposite direction and when they are ready, they collide producing many particles.

So this is what happends at CERN :

- A proton beams is produced.

-This beam is sent in a first small particle accelerator, then in second...

-Then it is sent to the big accelerator (the 27km one).

-When it reaches the maximum energy, it collides with another protons beam running in the opposite direction.

And this is what we get.

                                                               particles collision

So, Yes, the CERN IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!

                                                     Even Morgan Freeman thinks so!

Next part will be about the detectors at CERN, how they work, and what particles they can detect !

And we'll talk about Neutrinos very soon!

ps: Photos of the CERN were taken mars 2014 when I was there.

Sophie incognito