CERN, the LHC and the future of everything we know as "real"

CERN in a nutshell

"CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature."

A gateway to the Universe.

"Specialist facilities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for individual nations to build include advanced particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, and facilities for the production of exotic forms of matter, including antimatter."

Our understanding of the Universe is about to change.

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionize our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe."



The most powerful supercomputer system in the world

"The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100 000 dual layer DVDs every year. To allow the thousands of scientists scattered around the globe to collaborate on the analysis over the next 15 years (the estimated lifetime of the LHC), tens of thousands of computers located around the world are being harnessed in a distributed computing network called the Grid."

CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid

"The CMS detector is built around a huge solenoid magnet. This takes the form of a cylindrical coil of superconducting cable that generates a magnetic field of 4 teslas, about 100 000 times that of the Earth. The magnetic field is confined by a steel 'yoke' that forms the bulk of the detector's weight of 12 500 tonnes. An unusual feature of the CMS detector is that instead of being built in-situ underground, like the other giant detectors of the LHC experiments, it was constructed on the surface, before being lowered underground in 15 sections and reassembled.

Secret dimensions

"Some string theorists have taken this idea further to explain a mystery of gravity that has perplexed physicists for some time – why is gravity so much weaker than the other fundamental forces? Does its carrier, the graviton, exist and where? The idea is that we do not feel gravity’s full effect in the everyday world. Gravity may appear weak only because its force is being shared with other spatial dimensions.

To find out whether these ideas are just products of wild imaginations or an incredible leap in understanding will require experimental evidence. But how?

High-energy experiments could prise open the inconspicuous dimensions just enough to allow particles to move between the normal 3D world and other dimensions. This could be manifest in the sudden disappearance of a particle into a hidden dimension, or the unexpected appearance of a particle in an experiment. Who knows where such a discovery could lead!"