CERN's next big machine

12 September 2001

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Fast-forward five years from now to 2006, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will begin its work in earnest, and this is the view you should see in the 27 km circumference tunnel at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva. The LHC will collide beams of protons head-on, and to reach energies as high as 7 TeV, superconducting magnets will be used to guide the proton beams on their circular path. The magnets will operate at only 1.9 K - 1.9 degrees above absolute zero - which is colder than outer space! To keep cool, the magnets will sit inside a long pipe-like cryostat - in effect, a "Thermos flask" which cools the magnet coils with liquid helium. To guide the two counter-rotating beams, the LHC will use more than 1200 dipole magnets, each 14.2 m long, which will reach a field strength of 8.35 Tesla. This is five times greater than in CERN's 25-year old Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), which continue to be used, to inject the beams into the LHC.

Credit: CERN Photo
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