See inside the Large Hadron Collider Video

See inside the Large Hadron Collider Video Transcript

>> So the experiment was constructed on the surface in 15 major pieces weighing between 350 and 2,000 tons and they were all lowered in an 18 month period using a giant Gantry [assumed spelling] crane down this shaft 20 point 4 meters in diameter, and you can see the clearance is, with respect to the structures of the hole, are only about 7 centimeters each side. So this was a pretty delicate operation and I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we finally lowered this last piece in January of this year.

>> So this is where the particles come through?

>> Yeah. Two counter-rotating beams of protons inside the vacuum inside this pipe and they meet at the center of this barrel section here 40,000,000 times a second these protons collide and in that -- in each collision we reproduce conditions that haven't existed since a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang. And by analyzing the decays of particles that may be produced in those conditions we hope to understand some fundamental questions like, for instance, the origin of mass, which is one of the driving reasons to do this experiment. The energy density is such that it hasn't existed since the very early moments of the universe.

>> We have a lot of material hitting each other in a very small space?

>> A lot of energy concentrated in a very small space, which was the situation just in the fraction of a second of the big bang, and by analyzing what happens in those conditions, what particles are produced and then decay, we hope to answer some fundamental questions like, for instance, what's the origin of mass?

>> So the particles are coming from two different directions --

>> That's right

>> through this pipe?

>> Right -- through this pipe and then they collide 14,000,000 times a second, bunches of protons collide in the center of the detector.

>> How many of these detectors are there over the 17 mile course?

>> There's 4 detectors, there are 2 which are massive general purpose detectors like this. This is the compact neon solenoid, CNS and the other one is called ATLAS, so in a sense that's our competition.

>> How much does this weigh?

>> The whole thing together is about 12 and a half thousand tons.

>> And all this stuff is specifically custom made?

>> Oh, absolutely -- I mean -- you don't buy these things off the shelf, you --

>> And all the components?

>> All the components -- yeah. And that's an awful lot of components. Ya know -- there are -- in this thing -- it's huge, but at the same time it's huge, it's a very sensitive instrument.

>> So all the stuff that's going on inside this tube is -- would be invisible to the human eye?

>> Invisible to the human eye -- yeah, yeah, that's right. So you have to visualize it by having detectors, which are sensitive to the sort of particles or radiation that's being produced and then you reconstruct it from the digital data that comes from those sensors, and then you can reconstruct it into a picture which the human eye can understand. ^E00:02:47