Large Hadron Collider - Purdue Particle Physics

News

Timeline

Date	Milestone
September 10th 2008	First beams were circulated in the LHC
September 19th 2008	An electrical connection failed as current was being increased in the magnets that guide the proton beams. This has required the replacement of 53 magnets and changes to prevent a reoccurrence.
September/October 2009	Projected date for first collisions in the LHC
December 2009 – October 2010	Expected period for the first physics data taking.

Summary

On September 10th, 2008 a new era in the exploration of our Universe began when the Large Hadron Collider circulated the first beam of Protons in Geneva, Switzerland.
(see http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc%2Dfirst%2Dbeam/Welcome.html )

Scientific events like this only occur every few decades. This event received world wide publicity and was broadcast live on the Web at 2.30am in the Eastern USA because of the 6 hour time difference. The Large Hadron Collider will collide counter rotating beams of protons at the highest energies ever achieved in a controlled experiment. The LHC will explore the physics of the Big Bang and it is expected that major discoveries will occur over the next few years that will result in a new understanding of our Universe and it's evolution. There are a number of puzzles which are expected to be solved. The discovery of the Higgs particle would explain why particles have masses, the discovery of supersymmetry could reveal the origin and constituents of dark matter which accounts for 22% of the Universe and is a critical factor in galaxy formation and our very existence. More exotic discoveries could relate to extra dimensions and the existence of parallel Universes. Miniature black holes could also be produced but would evaporate almost instantaneously ( they will not swallow Switzerland!!).

The Large Hadron Collider was built with a world wide collaboration of tens of thousands of physicists and engineers at a cost of over 10 billion dollars. To detect the products of the collisions requires massive state of the art detectors. The Purdue Particle Physics Group is a major group in the CMS experiment. We have built ,at Purdue, parts of the detector with over 60 million detector elements

This Web site is intended as an introduction to the LHC and CMS for Teachers and High School Students and also provides an opportunity to obtain more information from the Purdue Group by asking questions.

Purdue Physicists working on LHC are Professors Virgil Barnes, Daniela Bortoletto, Art Garfinkel, Laszlo Gutay, Matthew Jones, David Miller, Norbert Neumeister, and Ian Shipsey.
These pages of the Purdue Particle web site were prepared by Professor David Miller and includes material from many of the web sites with links listed on this site.

Purdue University High Energy Physics

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