The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson. This would supply a crucial missing link in the Standard Model and explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.
The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border between the Jura Mountains and the Alps near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC circulated its first particle beams on 10 September 2008, but a few days later had to suspend operations due to equipment failure, when a faulty connection between two magnets triggered a shutdown which will delay its operation for two months.[1] Owing to the already planned winter shutdown, the collider will not be operational again until the spring of 2009..
Although concerns have been raised in the media and through the courts regarding the Safety of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, the consensus in the scientific community is that there is no conceivable threat from the LHC collisions.
