Bonus points if you can explain why people are freaking out about CERN activating it during the eclipse specifically. I don’t understand how these can be related in any way.
In: Physics
It smashes atoms into each other so we can see what they are made of when they collide and break up.
People freak out because uneducated/poorly educated.
People freak out because they are ignorant of physics and heard its going to create black holes. That’s false. Fun fact. Particles from space hit atoms in the earth’s atmosphere at energies that dwarf anything the LHC could ever produce and we are still here.
The eclipse has nothing to do with anything with LHC, nor would it.
The LHC itself is just one of many accelerators around the world that collides hydrogen ions together that scientists can then study the output from.
Simply because they are gullible. The LHC isn’t even going to be activated during the eclipse. The LHC is going to be off on April 8th.
The LHC collides protons together to try to improve our understanding of fundamental physics.
There is no connection between the eclipse and the LHC. Anyone spouting off nonsense about that is either trolling or they’re just a complete idiot.
The LHC is a particle collider, the largest one that humans have ever built. It accelerates tiny collections of particles to extremely high speeds and then steers them so they crash into each other. These super high energy collisions smash the particles together and in these immensely energetic collisions different types of particles can be produced. The LHC has a bunch of different detectors to measure what comes out of the collisions, and these experiments are used to test theories about particle physics.
The eclipse makes zero difference to the LHC. The LHC is in Europe, and isn’t even in the path of the eclipse. There have already been many solar eclipses since the LHC started operating.
Hadrons is a class of particles including protons and neutrons. This is what makes up the nucleolus of atoms. So the name literally means the big atom smasher and is pretty descriptive of what it does. There is a huge circular tunnel dug into the Alps. In these tunnels the LHC is built as a huge circle of supercoducting magnets. These accelerate the atoms up to extremely high speeds as they go round and around in this circle. There are a number of different experiments connected to the LHC but they all basically boil down to smashing the atoms into each other or something else and see what happens. When these high energy particles crash they have a huge amount of energy concentrated in a tiny point. And since energy is mass this energy can end up as exotic particles that we can study.
There have been some controversy around the LHC. We are doing things that does not happen naturally anywhere on Earth. However there are lots of these high energy particles in the solar system which crashes into the upper atmosphere and into other planets all the time. So researchers have never been worried about any destructive things happening. But conspiracy theorists are never happy and will just move the goal post whenever their predictions turns out to be wrong. The LHC have been operational through several solar eclipses already so there is nothing new about this one, not that solar eclipses and high energy particle research have anything to do with each other anyway.
The LHC is a massive scientific instrument (26.7 kilometres long) that is used to smash atoms.
Ions are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and smashed into each other so that we can find out what they are made of.
As a result of the LHC we have made some major discoveries in physics.
Poorly educated people love to freak out about it because they don’t understand how it works.
One theory is that it could make a tiny blackhole that could devour the Earth, but this is based on a gross misunderstanding of how it works.
Conspiracy theorists are now claiming it could destroy the Earth if run during eclipse which is total non-sense.
Others have claimed it can open a portal to hell and let demons out.
The amount of scientific ignorance involved here is just shocking.
The large hadron collider is a particle accelerator, the largest and most powerful in service I believe but there are a few in construction around the world. Particle accelerators are used to study different aspects of physics and are basically a giant ring that uses magnetic fields to speed particles up and collide them. There are ones in a straight line, but with a ring, you can keep accelerating. Put even simpler: place a ball inside a tube, shoot a bullet at it, watch explosion.
Why some people are scared?
Particle accelerators are used in experiments to create anti-matter, or more specifically anti-particles among other things. In theory if matter and anti-matter collide, it would release an enormous amount of energy and matter. Some people believe these experiments could create a cosmic level explosion and destroy the universe. In practice, we can barely create the smallest amounts of antimatter with current technology. That tiny bit basically “evaporates” instantly upon creation and contact with matter.
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It smashes hadrons (composite particles like protons and neutrons, electrons are elementary and have no smaller parts) together to see what comes out. This can create new particles we’ve never seen before and it furthers our understanding of physics. The ATLAS detector detected the highs boson a decade ago and changed how we understood the concept of “mass”, and what causes it.
Why people are afraid is because a machine like this can possibly create micro black holes. They hear this and freak out, but even if it did they would be small, and the smaller they are the quicker they evaporate, which they would do almost instantly. There is no danger
It accelerates particles super fast and then smashes them into each other and then fancy high precision instruments take a lot of measurements to see what happens. It’s very useful for studying particle behavior and interactions at the sub-atomic level at the near speed of light.
It is credited with finding the Higgs Boson particle (a particle theorized to exist that gives matter it’s mass) and is also helping us understand antimatter.
People freak out because they think it’s going to cause a black hole and destroy earth. It was a bigger fear back in 2008 when people just heard things like smashing atoms together and simulating big bang like reactions.
The only people concerned the collider is dangerous still are the same ones that think eclipses are signs from their specific deity.
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