SYLLABUS SECTION: GS III (SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY)
WHY IN THE NEWS?
The world’s most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
Will begin smashing protons into each other at unprecedented levels of energy from July 5.
MORE DETAILS:
- Data from the third run of LHC could provide evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics such as dark matter and dark energy
- Standard Model explains how basic building blocks of matter interact,
- Governed by four fundamental forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational force).
- Dark matter is the matter that does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot.
- Dark energy is mysterious influence driving accelerated expansion of the universe.
The LHC
- The Large Hadron Collider is a giant, complex machine built to study particles that the smallest known building blocks of all things.
- Structurally, it is a 27-km-long track-loop bury 100 metres underground on the Swiss-French border.
- LHC (at CERN, European particle physics laboratory) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built that pushes protons or ions to near the speed of light driving accelerated expansion of the universe.
- ATLAS is the largest general purpose particle detector experiment at the LHC.
- The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of the largest international scientific collaborations in history, with the same goals as ATLAS, but which uses a different magnet-system design.
Read more: UPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS
Source: INDIAN EXPRESS