What is the Large Hadron Collider for kids?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is a giant circular tunnel built underground. The tunnel is 17 miles (27 kilometers) long, and between 50 and 175 meters below the ground.

What is the real purpose of the Large Hadron Collider?

The LHC’s goal is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics, including measuring the properties of the Higgs boson searching for the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories, and other unresolved questions in particle physics.

What is CERN in layman’s terms?

CERN is a research institute near Geneva, Switzerland. The full name is Organisation Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research). Today 22 nations are members of the organisation. It is the world’s biggest laboratory for particle physics.

What is a particle accelerator in layman’s terms?

A particle accelerator, also called an atom smasher, is a machine that accelerates (speeds up) particles and makes them travel at very high speeds. Accelerators work by pushing particles like electrons, protons, or atomic nuclei (the centers of atoms) with electric fields and by steering them with magnetic fields.

What did the Large Hadron Collider discover?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is also a big hadron discoverer. The atom smasher near Geneva, Switzerland, is most famous for demonstrating the existence of the Higgs boson in 2012, a discovery that slotted into place the final keystone of the current classification of elementary particles.

Where is the hadron Collider?

CERN
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. The accelerator sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.