Nov 9 2009
Inside an insulating vacuum chamber in a tunnel about 100 meters below the surface of the Franco-Swiss plain near Geneva, packets of protons whirl around the 27-km diameter of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a speed close to that of light, colliding every 25 nanoseconds at four beam crossings. The products of these collisions, of which hundreds of billions will be produced each second, are observed and measured with the most advanced particle-detection technology, capable of tracking individual particles as they generate a signature track during its passage through the detectors. All this information is captured, filtered and piped to huge networks of microprocessors for analysis and study by an international team of physicists.
When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes on line in 2009, it will be the largest scientific experiment ever constructed, and the data it collects will lead physics to a new understanding of our universe. Many thousands of scientists and engineers were behind the planning and construction of this marvelous machine; a few key members of this team have agreed to write about their role in this adventure, with the common goal of revealing the LHC to a broader readership: its fundamental technology; the basics of the theory behind the experiments; the challenges in planning and civil engineering; the four key experiments; and the informatics infrastructure that will channel the data to the workstations of scientists around the world.
Publication title: The Large Hadron Collider: A Marvel of Technology
Author: Lyndon Evans, Editor
Publication type: Book (Paperback)
Publication date: 09 July 2009
Number of pages: 260
ISBN number: 978-2-9400222-34-6
Price: 45.00 EUR Euros