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The LHC has four giant detectors designed to probe new dimensions, search for the [[Higgs Boson]] (the so called "God Particle", which gives matter and other [[boson]]s mass) and hypothetically to investigate what the [[universe]] might have been like immediately after the [[Big Bang]] (assuming it actually happened).
The LHC has four giant detectors designed to probe new dimensions, search for the [[Higgs Boson]] (the so called "God Particle", which gives matter and other [[boson]]s mass) and hypothetically to investigate what the [[universe]] might have been like immediately after the [[Big Bang]] (assuming it actually happened).
The collider was built to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and smash them together in search of particles and forces that reigned earlier than the first trillionth of a second of time, but the machine could run as low as four trillion electron volts for its first year. Upgrades are scheduled already.
==Challenges==
Legal challenges have been made against the LHC as some believe it could open a microscopic [[black hole]] that would swallow the Earth. However scientists have effectively ruled out this scenario, pointing out - among other things - that such particle collisions take place quite often naturally.<ref>Steven B. Giddings, Michelangelo M. Mangano: [http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381 "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes"]</ref><ref>Benjamin Koch, Marcus Bleicher, Horst Stoecker: [http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3349 "Exclusion of black hole disaster scenarios at the LHC"]</ref> The LHC seeks to prove or disprove other important concepts and theories, including supersymmetry, [[antimatter]], as well as confirming the existence of many [[lepton]]s, such as the [[muon]] and [[gluon]].
Legal challenges have been made against the LHC as some believe it could open a microscopic [[black hole]] that would swallow the Earth. However scientists have effectively ruled out this scenario, pointing out - among other things - that such particle collisions take place quite often naturally.<ref>Steven B. Giddings, Michelangelo M. Mangano: [http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381 "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes"]</ref><ref>Benjamin Koch, Marcus Bleicher, Horst Stoecker: [http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3349 "Exclusion of black hole disaster scenarios at the LHC"]</ref> The LHC seeks to prove or disprove other important concepts and theories, including supersymmetry, [[antimatter]], as well as confirming the existence of many [[lepton]]s, such as the [[muon]] and [[gluon]].