MORE ABOUT LARGE HADRON COLLIDER .

The LHC is an international research project based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists, engineers and support staff from 111 nations are combining state-of-the-art science and engineering in one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted.
The LHC is physically located in a circular 27km (16.5m) long tunnel under the Swiss/French border outside Geneva, but as an international project the LHC crosses continents and many international borders.

Who is involved?

The LHC project includes 111 nations in designing, building and testing equipment and software, participating in experiments and analysing data. It is a remarkably harmonious international collaboration in which the UK has a leading role. British scientists and engineers have prominent roles in construction, management and experimental teams and the UK makes a significant contribution to the LHC budget.

UK research groups involved in the LHC project.

Over the 13 year construction period (1994 to 2006 inclusive) the total UK contribution for the detectors, GriddPP (materials and staff effort) and collider was £511M. This includes the UK’s annual CERN subscription over this period. This is less than the price of one pint of beer per UK adult per year.

The total cost to the UK of participating in the LHC project will be £108M per year, including £82M per year as its national subscription to CERN’s on-going annual budget of approximately £455M. The subscription of member countries to the CERN budget is linked to their GDP. Non-member countries are also involved in, and contribute to, experiments.

The cost of the LHC project (machine and personnel) is £2.1bn, or £3.5bn if the infrastructure costs, incurred during the construction phase, and the costs of computing, GRID, early running etc are included. The cost of the LHC is mainly paid for by the 20 members of CERN, with significant contributions from the 6 observer nations.

Who benefits?

There are two types of benefit that the LHC project produces for the UK. The less easily measured benefits are:

• new understanding of the physical world,
• training of world class scientists and engineers,
• maintenance of a vibrant, world class UK research base and,
• a leading role in a major international project.

More easily appreciated are the knowledge, expertise and technology that is spun off from the LHC and can be directly applied to development of new medical, industrial and consumer technologies.

The science of the LHC is far removed from everyday life, but the fact that the science is so extreme constantly pushes the boundaries of existing technical and engineering solutions. Simply building the LHC has generated new technology.

The LHC is not primarily about building a better world. Rather, it allows us to test theories and ideas about how the Universe works, its origins and evolution. The questions asked, and answers found, are so fundamental that the information from LHC experiments will only be applied many years in the future, if at all. However, this is an experiment and one of the surprises from the experiment may be new science that can be applied almost immediately.

What next?

The LHC is still new, but its successor - the International Linear Collider (ILC) – is already being discussed. So why build two high energy colliders that operate on the same principles?

The LHC is a ‘discovery’ machine, a general purpose tool that will open up new areas of physics and demonstrate the existence, or not, of predicted new laws and particles. The ILC is a precision instrument that will allow scientists to explore in detail the discoveries made by the LHC.

The ILC is still at the planning stage, no location for the machine has been agreed and much feasibility testing has to be conducted before the construction phase.

BY Satyam pathak