Hello everyone!
I have been watching the show young sheldon and there, Dr. Sturgis (a physics professor) said that he was working on a supercollider. But what is that? What is it exactly and what effects or impacts does it have on us?
(I am not really good in physics, just interested in the topic so a simple explanation would be appreciated if possible).
In: Physics
A particle collider (super or otherwise) is an electromagnetic gun. Normally this gun is engineered as a circle, but there are linear colliders as well, that boost particles such as protons in opposite directions to very close to the speed of light. When a signal triggers a certain gate to open, the two particle streams are directed into one another, forcing them to collide. No two particles are likely to collide at all in this attempt, but given the sheer number of particles involved, collisions do happen. This is not unlike a lottery being guaranteed an eventual winner due to the sheer number of people involved. Those extremely rare collisions literally sheer apart the particles into more fundamental constituents, which are then trapped in a very strong magnetic field. The physical interaction of these fundamental particles with that magnetic field inform us about the particle’s properties and how they fit into our mathematical understanding of particle physics, allowing us to create better theories, more accurate equations, and ultimately more predictions about what should and should not exist. It is all in an effort to understand the fabric of our universe, and indeed of reality itself.
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