Form the birth of scientific knowledge, atoms, made up of neutrons and electrons, were considered the smallest particles in this world.  The increasing growth of technology and the curiosities of scientists and physicists around the world however, led to an invention that defies the theory the world has know and believed for ages.  Since the 1930s, scientists have known that accelerating subatomic particles and smashing them was a pretty good way to study the underlying makeup of the universe.  Eventually they created a machine by the name of Particle Accelerator to collide atoms in the center of the detector of the machine with enormous energy, giving birth to a spray of new particles never seen before.  Zach Billing, a member of Mrs. Noblemen’s English 107 class in University of Miami, is fascinated by these inventions of particle accelerators and is specifically interested in the new particle accelerator being built in Geneva, Switzerland, expected to be finished by May 2008.  Zach is a nineteen year old young man majoring in physics and playing in UM’s band.  His love for physics motivates him to constantly explore more in hopes of finding new creations by physicists, which explains the reason why he came to know of the world’s largest particle accelerator named Large Hadron Collider (LHC).   

               The Large Hadron Collider is a scientific instrument of unprecedented complexity, which has taken over twelve years of construction.  The work is all part of an $8 billion project at the international physics laboratory called CERN.  It is capable of smashing subatomic particles together, reproducing the energies that existed a fraction of a second after the big bang.  The LCH has a circumference of twenty seven kilometers and an electromagnet that weight almost 2,000 tons designed to detect ultra-tiny subatomic particles is lowered into the hole of the machine.  According to the article “New start-up schedule for world’s most powerful particle accelerator” on <www.physorg.com>, cooling the first sector of the machine to a temperature of 1.9 K (-271.3°C), colder than outer space, began earlier this year.  In order for the machine to cool over 10,000 tons of liquid nitrogen and 130 tons of liquid helium will be deployed through a cryogenic system including over 40,000 leak-tight welds.  When the assembly of the machine is complete, the detector will have a special pipe running through it.  Then, the machine starts running and particles taken from hydrogen atoms will zip both ways around the loop at close to the speed of light to collide and create new particles that are given the name “God Particles” and “Sparticles”.  Zach believes that in the past these particles have been made by accident and says, “Because physicists did not know how to purposely make it the investigation expanded and led to the invention of LHC”.

              The effectiveness of the LHC relies on a chain of particle accelerators, the oldest of which was constructed in the 1950s.  Based on these additional resources, countless physics are making improvements for the successful operation and smooth running of the LHC.  The machine has four detectors- ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. ATLAS and CMS are very big particle detectors weighing 7000 and 12500 tons respectively.  Just the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector alone is designed and built by more than 2,500 scientists.  After the completion of the machine, engineers from thirty nine nations will help investigate the fundamental nature of particles and explore dark matter — matter that cannot be directly observed, but comprises most matter in the universe.  Installation of the final component of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator is under way along the Franco-Swiss, border of Geneva, Switzerland. 

            What is expected? Well, once the experiments begin this machine shall provide an enormous amount of data that will enable the physicists to look at the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions at the smallest distances.  Many researchers are hoping to see supersymmetric particles, called Sparticles for short. Sparticles are predicted by supersymmetry theory, which posits that for every particle we know of, there is a sister particle that we have not yet discovered.  The main scientific objectives of this mission is to provide information about dark matter (the mysterious stuff in the universe that astronomers can detect gravitationally, but not see), black holes, extra dimensions of space, possible violations of special theory of relativity, and matter under extreme conditions.  If all goes as expected by the physicists and the LHC works, it will give explanations for some of the biggest mysteries in science.