Most days, science is an infinitely tenacious process that illuminates the most secret histories of the universe using nothing but the genius of the human mind. And that is beautiful.
Other days, though, it’s shut down by a rat.
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Well, a weasel, but still.
Back in April of this year, the Large Hadron Collider had some electricity problems one night, so they couldn’t perform their regularly scheduled experiments. Now, the Large Hadron Collider, which took ten years to construct (finishing in 2008), is 17 miles long and is arguably Earth’s most advanced scientific tool. What could possibly halt this behemoth of a thing?
As it turns out, about six pounds of fuzz and attitude. And for once, it’s not Peter Dinklage.
Eventually, the scientists found the culprit: a weasel had snuck past their hardened defenses (aka the front door) and started chowing down on some wires. Unfortunately for him, the Collider is always running, so our furry hero caught the business end of around 66 kilovolts.
Just for some context, the Collider uses enough energy annually to power about a third of the closest city, Geneva, or a couple charming seaside villages. So, the adjective you’d use for our unfortunate friend at that point would probably be “crispy.”
The Collider is no stranger to powerfully weird sh*t: just recently, a bunch of totally stable folks faked a human sacrifice on the campus. One of its predecessors was systematically assaulted by raccoons, which continues to be my favorite thing to this date. This is of course not to mention that another shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider itself was literally caused by a baguette, my second favorite thing. And even before the faux sacrifice, in the days preceding the Collider’s first experiments, there was some concern that it would produce a black hole and end the world.
Despite knowing that the Earth has continued its time-honored tradition of not being ripped apart by artificial black holes these eight years after the Collider started operating, it’s a little hard to fathom what scientists would want with enough energy to instantly sauté our little buddy, let alone power a city. Have they built a super villain particle cannon or something? Why else would Mother Nature send her furry agent to sabotage their project? Should we, the public, be concerned that they’re about to go cackling mad-scientist on our collective ass?
Well, actually, yes to the particle cannon thing. No to the mad scientist thing though, mostly because the cannon is circular, so, bad design for world domination. Hey, they’re physicists, not, uh… no, actually, they probably should have figured that one out.
As far as the particle cannon goes, the mission of the Large Hadron Collider is to smash subatomic particles together at nearly the speed of light and see what happens.
Science is a wonderful thing.
Since Newton, physicists have been adding pieces to our understanding of the universe. Through normal observation, we can determine most of what we need to know to fully understand the world around us. In some other sciences, you could even comfortably say that normal observation can yield everything you need to know about the science. Physics is a little tricky, though, because its laws can drastically change in extreme conditions. In other, less scientific words: at high energies, some serious business goes down.
Our neighborhood is a pretty calm one. I don’t mean cosmically speaking, although we are in the sweet spot for life in a lot of ways. I mean, at this point in our universe’s history, there are some pretty radical things going on — supernovae, black holes, that kind of thing — but the conditions in the universe at large are a lot more forgiving now than they were.
Back when the universe was young, things were pretty metal. It was way too hot for any particles to combine into the atoms we know now, so everything was just kinda there, chilling, in an indescribably hot soup. It was so darn hot that a lot of scientists think that all the forces of physics were fused into one “super force.” All hail the super force. It took hundreds of thousands ofyears for things to cool down enough for stars and galaxies to form.
The universe at that time was “high-energy.” Right now, the universe is in a mostly “low-energy” state — things are moving at speeds significantly less than the speed of light, most of space is relatively low in temperature, that kind of thing. It’s like if the universe was once a death-metal rocker, but now it only does satellite radio.
I’m looking at you, Ozzy.
Physicists, for the most part, study low-energy physics, which is pretty much anything that doesn’t involve insane speeds and levels of energy. This could be anything from classical mechanics (the stuff you learned in high school) to most quantum physics.
Quantum physics is tricky, though. It deals with really, really small stuff — atoms and electrons and all of that jazz. Scientists can observe atoms and electrons normally, in a low-energy situation, but certain particles or forces will only appear in very specific high-energy situations, like police showing up only when a party is getting too loud.
For example, Peter Higgs and his buddies theorized the existence of a particle called the Higgs Boson back in 1964, named for the incredibly humble Peter himself. The Higgs Boson, to cut a long lecture series short, is the particle that gives everything else in the universe mass. It was even given the nickname “the God Particle.” You can tell it’s important if it’s given a nickname that sounds like one Kanye would give himself. If he was, uh, subatomic.
The Higgs seemed really probable, and there was some circumstantial evidence, but nowhere near enough to prove its existence. Nevertheless, scientists thought it was a darn good idea. Finding the Higgs was considered to be just about one of biggest things in science, as it would confirm the Standard Model, one of the most all-inclusive and cutting-edge theories in physics. It couldn’t be detected in low-energy situations, though, so scientists needed to find a way to simulate a situation with so much energy, it mimicked the first years of the universe itself.
So they built a giant particle cannon. Obviously.
In the case of the Higgs Boson discovery, scientists used the Collider to stuff a lot of energy into the very, very small packages of two protons to rev them up to very close to the speed of light and then smash them into each other.
Neato.
The resulting reaction followed very closely the predicted reaction if the God Particle was in fact a thing. So, being good scientists and running several tests with similar outcomes, the folks at the Collider tentatively claimed the existence of the Higgs, and then partied like it was 1999. Or, uh, the early days of the universe. Whatever.
Of course, it would be really hard to get funding for a circular doomsday device if it would only be used for one experiment. The discovery of the Higgs particle is just one example of the Collider’s success in high-energy physics: in fact, the Collider is used frequently to perform experiments that test the boundaries of science. Physics is a field that flourishes in the extremes. With the power the Collider provides, scientists explore the question of higher dimensions, the problem of the enigmatic dark matter, even the nature of space itself. The Collider is not only a tool for the furtherance of science, it’s proof that the riddle of the universe is one that can be solved, and it’s a testament to the fact that nothing can stop the simple but infinitely powerful drive of human curiosity.
Except, you know, weasels.
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