LARGE HADRON COLLIDOR - PARTICLES ACCELERATOR

 

Have you ever wondered why the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator, can't make particles go faster than light?

After all, it can smash protons together at a whopping 13 teraelectron volts (TeV), which is about 0.99999999 times the speed of light in a vacuum.

That's pretty close, but not close enough, according to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Einstein's theory tells us that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum, which is about 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second).

Only massless particles, such as photons, can reach that ultimate speed limit. But protons, like all matter, have mass. And mass is a tricky thing when it comes to speed.

You see, mass and energy are two sides of the same coin, as Einstein famously showed with his equation E=mc^2.

This means that the more energy you give to an object, the more mass it gains. And the more mass it has, the harder it is to accelerate.

It's like trying to push a truck versus a bicycle. You need more force to get the truck moving.

To get to the speed of light as mass, you need an infinite amount of energy, which is impossible to achieve.

As the proton gets closer and closer to the speed of light, its mass increases and its length contracts, making it harder and harder to push.

Eventually, you reach a point where no matter how much energy you pump into the proton, it won't go any faster. It's stuck at its maximum speed, which is always less than the speed of light.

Not only does the proton's mass and length change, but also its time.

Time itself slows down for the proton as it approaches the speed of light. This is called time dilation, and it means that from the proton's perspective, everything else in the universe is moving faster than normal.

So even if the proton could somehow reach the speed of light, it would also reach a state where time stops for it. And that's not very fun.

Now, the LHC is designed to minimize any interference with the particle beams, which are made of billions of protons traveling in opposite directions around a 27-kilometer (17-mile) ring.

The ring is kept in a vacuum, so there are no air molecules to bump into. The ring is also surrounded by powerful magnets that steer and focus the beams toward four collision points, where they smash into each other and create new particles.

However, even in a vacuum, there are still some residual gas molecules and stray photons that can interact with the protons.

These interactions can cause some protons to lose energy or change direction slightly, reducing the quality and intensity of the beams.

To prevent this, the LHC uses special devices called collimators and beam dumps to absorb or divert any unwanted particles before they reach the detectors.