2019-08-11_The_Week

52 The last word

THE WEEK 10 August 2019

He looksabit 1968 –

beard, leather waistcoat,

jeans–and his job title is

downright hippie-

psychedelic. Paul Collier is

head of beams.Imeet him

in atunnel 300ft below

Switzerland, or maybe

France. Down here, it’s

hard to tell. We are inside

the biggest machine in the

world, the Large Hadron

Collider (LHC):a17-mile

ring beneath villages and

farmland on the Franco-

Swiss border.

Luckily, this machine is

not switched on. When it

is, there is radiation, and

something odd happens to

the surrounding air–none

of it good for your health.

I’m here now not only

because it’s safe to explore,

but also because the LHC

is having one of its periodic upgrades. This one is perhaps the

most important since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

When the machine is switched on, subatomic particles rush round

tubes inside the tunnel 11,245 timesasecond; these are the beams

of which Collier is the head. He tells me the particles reach a

speed that is within “walking distance” of the speed of light.

Ipress him on this. He recalculates. It turns out the figure is

6.2mph short of the speed of light–“so probably jogging

speed”–still not bad

considering light travels at

671 million miles per hour.

At certain points on their journey

these particles are tricked into

committing suicide by crashing

into particles going the other way round. The resulting splatters

and spirals may, one day, tell us what everything is made of and

how it came to be that way. Or not. Geneva-based Cern–the

European Organisation for Nuclear Research–ist he great hope

of every physicist. It runs the LHC, which is not only the biggest

but also the best instrument of its type in the world. If the truth is

to be found, surely it will be here.

Seven years ago, it seemed to be happening. Cern announced it

had discovered an elusive particle called the Higgs boson. Cernies

almost pass out with glee at the memory of this: “I queued for

12 hours to get into the room where the announcement was

made,” recalls Sarah Williams,a30-year-old physicist at

Cambridge University. It wasatriumph, but predictable. The

Higgs more or less had to exist because it is what gives mass to

almost everything in the universe–people, buildings, planets,

whatever. Williams compares the Higgs to the most famous

person inaroom; all the autograph-hunting particles cluster

around it. But what has not yet leapt out from all the data

spewed out of the LHC–and this is why some claim it to be

afailure–ist he holy grail

of contemporary science:

anew physics.

Here’s the problem with

the old physics in a

paragraph. We have

quantum theory for very

small stuff, relativity

for very big stuff and the

Standard Model, which is

the table of all the weird

particles we have

discovered. All seem to

be true, but relativity and

quantum theory contradict

each other and the model

doesn’t work. “You can’t

plug the Standard Model

into the universe, as it

would vanish,” explains

physicist Mark Williams,

based at Cern. On top of

that, physicists can only

study 4% of the universe.

The rest is made up of

dark matter and energy that we can’t see or yet detect.

In short, 500 years after Copernicus, 300 years after Newton and

100 years after Einstein, physics is back to square one. If there’s

one thing more astounding than our breathtaking knowledge, it’s

our stupendous ignorance. Astounding but, for the physicists at

Cern, also thrilling. “We have the exciting prospect of the next

generation of experiments,” says Williams, “both here and

elsewhere, which will make us even more sensitive to new

physics–discoveries beyond

our understanding.”

At first sight, Cern is probably

the least impressive temple of

truth ever built,arandom

assembly of nondescript and

generally shabby postwar architecture inside which long, beige

corridors seem to lead to nowhere in particular. In the canteen

it gets more exciting. It is seething with young people–mainly

school groups–and intense huddles of physicists and engineers.

In the garden, there’safat blue tube bearing the words

Acceleration of Science.

All the real grandeur of the mission is hidden below ground. Here

you are confronted with the central paradox of the place: in order

to track, observe and manipulate the smallest things in the world,

we have to build the biggest machine in the world.

The tunnel is so long it flexes with the phases of the Moon. This

could beaproblem for Paul Collier’s beams. “The moon deforms

the tunnel,” explains Glyn Kirby, the Cern engineer in charge of

magnets, “and so the LHC, like the sea, is moving. We correct for

this movement with thousands of small magnets that push the

beam back into position.” This scale can inspire wonder, but also

fear. When the LHC first went into action in 2008, some feared it

would createablack hole that would suck in the entire world or

Life, the universe and everything:

inside the world’s biggest machine

The Large Hadron Collider: “the great hope of every physicist”

Since 2008, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider has been providing the answers to some of our most fundamental questions.

Cananew upgrade help it unlock the holy grail of contemporary science? Bryan Appleyard getsarare guided tour

“When the Large Hadron Collider first went

into action, some feared it would cause a

disaster that would eliminate the universe”