A collider is a particle accelerator that accelerates positive and negative particles to very high energies and then collides them head-on. The Large Particle Collider is the most powerful equipment for high-energy physics experiments, but it is also regarded by many as a bottomless pit of money. Not only does it require a lot of money to build a collider, but it also consumes a lot of money for its later use and maintenance. The pursuit of higher energy is the unremitting efforts of particle physicists.
The sizes of electrons and protons are very small. The upper limit of their diameters currently measured experimentally is less than ten minus 15 meters. To make such small particles collide head-on, they must be restricted to a very small size. Movement within a narrow range. The European Large Hadron Collider LHC, currently the world's largest collider, is designed in a ring shape, with a circumference of 27 kilometers. Inside, the flow of positive and negative protons moving close to the speed of light has a width of nanometers (ten to the minus 9th power). meters). From this alone, you can feel how advanced technology is required. Of course, there is also need for funds to provide technical support.
The advantage of the circular collider is that it can accelerate particles multiple times in a fixed ring by changing the strength of the magnetic field and electric field. The stronger the magnetic field and the larger the radius of the ring, the faster the particles can be accelerated to a higher speed. High energy. In order to obtain a stronger magnetic field, some materials need to be cooled to more than 200 degrees Celsius below zero in order to generate a strong magnetic field with the energized superconductor. In addition, a high vacuum needs to be maintained within the collider's ring, and massive amounts of data need to be recorded. Strict requirements such as these make the collider a large power consumer. The European Large Hadron Collider can consume up to 200 megawatts of power when operating.
What’s even more frightening is that particle physicists’ pursuit of higher-energy collider seems to be endless. They are not satisfied with the energy of the European Large Hadron Collider, but also want to build a circumference A super large collider that reaches 100 kilometers. If this collider is really built, subsequent maintenance and use will also be a huge expense.
The collider has played a key role in human understanding of the basic components of the material world. After the discovery of the God particle Higgs particle, the Standard Model of particle physics achieved great success. Although there is still a lot of work to be done on the Higgs particle, compared with before, high-energy physics has indeed encountered a bottleneck period.
Some theories predict the existence of supersymmetric particles corresponding to particles, and they hope to use colliders to discover such particles. But in fact, no trace of the existence of supersymmetric particles was found in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, which almost sentenced supersymmetric particles to death. This disappointed physicists who supported the supersymmetry theory. As for whether to build a super large collider, supporters and opponents are still debating, so we can just wait and see.