Transcript Slide 1

“What determines the size of objects that we see around us or
indeed even the size of ourselves, and what determines the
size of the atoms themselves?”
Cern is a place in Genva where scientists have spent
the past 30 years building a massive 17 mile
underground ring of magnets and special tubing. The
idea simply is to force two very fast streams of lead
ions (atoms with extra electrons) together at speed
and see what happens.
The LHC will collide lead ions to recreate the
conditions just after the Big Bang. The data obtained
will allow physicists to study a state of matter known
as quark-gluon plasma, which is believed to have
existed soon after the Big Bang.
As the plasma cools it will model the behavior of the
universe milliseconds after the big bang. Then we
hope to see the “Higgs Boson” and gain some more
understanding not only to why those extra chips make
us fatter but why the molecules themselves have the
property that we assign as “mass”
It is suggested that all particles had no
mass just after the Big Bang.
As the Universe cooled and the
temperature fell below a critical value, an
invisible force field called the ‘Higgs field’
was formed together with the associated
‘Higgs boson’. Like a massive electric field
across the universe
The field prevails throughout the cosmos: any particles that interact with
it are given a mass via the Higgs boson.
The more they interact, the heavier they become, whereas particles that
never interact are left with no mass at all i.e. mass moving at speed etc..
It is kinda like Star Wars idea of “feeling the force”. Well done to Yoda
who may soon be proved right (as also would be Peter Boson)
Mr Powell (Head of Physics)