Super collider

That is where the LHC comes in. The reason it is so important is it can put more energy into these collisions than was ever possible before by smashing hadrons, a specific type of particle, at speeds over 99.9999978 percent of the speed of light. This spectacular kind of energy is the same kind produced shortly after the big bang, the theoretical start of the universe. With this new, unprecedented access to the exotic insides of particles, the LHC provides physicists their best view yet into what makes matter work.

The God particle
Among the most well-known goals for the LHC is the intention to directly observe a certain particle for the first time. This particle, called the Higgs boson (and occasionally referred to as the God particle), would answer a long-standing question about the nature of mass and thus the mechanism explaining how gravity really works.

“We know empirically how much things weigh, but we don’t know how they acquire that mass,” says UW-Madison physics professor Wesley Smith, who is in charge of one of the pieces of the LHC. Smith oversees one of the important parts of a particle detector called the Compact Muon Solenoid, which looks at and analyzes the spewed-out insides as they briefly appear after collisions.

The Higgs boson is also the final element of what is called the Standard Model of physics to be seen directly. The Standard Model is, unsurprisingly, the standard model physicists use to understand the universe. All their equations and theories, from Newton to Hawking, fit in the Standard Model somewhere, and in general it has been a phenomenal success. But, being a skeptical bunch, physicists will not rest easy until every piece of the model has been directly observed; with the completion of the LHC, that is possible for the first time. And, of course, where there is a chance of big gains there is also a chance of big losses.

“We should see [the Higgs boson], but we could be wrong,” Smith says. “And if it’s wrong, that’s only more exciting. We’ll learn even more that way.” Some people have to try to be half-glass-full types – for physicists, dogged optimism is simply a way of life.

UW-Madison physics professor Sau Lan Yu Wu works on a different particle detector, called A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS), which also sifts through the debris of collisions in search of new discoveries. Besides finding the elusive Higgs boson and finally explaining gravity, Wu says ATLAS and CMS may shed light on “other interesting problems [such as] dark matter candidates in the universe, microscopic black holes and even the possibility of extra dimensions of space.”

A fear of the unknown

Despite the quixotic nature of some of these possibilities (the extra dimensions would be in addition to our usual ones of height, length and width), the news media seem to have become fixated on one in particular: microscopic black holes. It is the fear of these, and their disastrous effects on the planet, that inform much of the public’s opinion on the LHC and in at least one case has even led to suicide. This fear is, on the surface, understandable. After all, black holes are globally known as the great vacuum cleaners of space – wander too close and you will never escape. Even something as ephemeral as a beam of light can get sucked in forever. If such a thing develops on this planet, the results would be catastrophic: the planet would be destroyed, utterly and completely.

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