A few facts about the Large Hadron Collider, how and why it was created, what is the use of it and what potential dangers for humanity it poses.

1. The construction of the LHC, or the Large Hadron Collider, was conceived back in 1984, and began only in 2001. Five years later, in 2006, thanks to the efforts of more than 10 thousand engineers and scientists from different countries, the construction of the Large Hadron Collider was completed.

2. The LHC is the largest experimental facility in the world.

3. So why the Large Hadron Collider?
It was named large due to its solid size: the length of the main ring, along which the particles are driven, is about 27 km.
Hadron - since the installation accelerates hadrons (particles that consist of quarks).
Collider - due to particle beams accelerating in the opposite direction, which collide with each other at special points.

4. What is the Large Hadron Collider for? The LHC is an ultra-modern research center where scientists conduct experiments with atoms, pushing ions and protons together at great speed. Scientists hope with the help of research to lift the veil over the mysteries of the appearance of the universe.

5. The project cost the scientific community an astronomical sum of $6 billion. By the way, Russia has delegated 700 specialists to the LHC, who are still working today. Orders for LHC brought about $120 million to Russian enterprises.

6. Without a doubt, the main discovery made at the LHC is the discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson, or as it is also called “God particles”. The Higgs boson is the last link in standard model. Another significant event in Bak'e is the achievement of a record collision energy value of 2.36 teraelectronvolts.

7. Some scientists, including those in Russia, believe that thanks to large-scale experiments at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where, in fact, the collider is located), scientists will be able to build the world's first time machine. However, most scientists do not share the optimism of colleagues.

8. The main fears of humanity about the most powerful accelerator on the planet are based on the danger that threatens humanity as a result of the formation of microscopic black holes capable of capturing the surrounding matter. There is another potential and extremely dangerous threat - the emergence of strapels (derived from Strange droplet), which, hypothetically, are capable of colliding with the nucleus of an atom to form more and more new strapels, transforming the matter of the entire Universe. However, most of the most respected scientists say that such an outcome is unlikely. But it is theoretically possible

9. In 2008, CERN was sued by two residents of the state of Hawaii. They accused CERN of trying to end humanity through negligence, demanding safety guarantees from scientists.

10. The Large Hadron Collider is located in Switzerland near Geneva. There is a museum at CERN, where visitors are clearly explained about the principles of the collider and why it was built.

11 . And finally, a little fun fact. Judging by the requests in Yandex, many people who are looking for information about the Large Hadron Collider do not know how to spell the name of the accelerator. For example, they write “andron” (and not only write what the NTV reports with their andron collider are worth), sometimes they write “android” (the Empire strikes back). In the bourgeois net, they also do not lag behind and instead of “hadron” they drive “hardon” into the search engine (in Orthodox English, hard-on is a riser). An interesting spelling in Belarusian is “Vyaliki hadronny paskaralnik”, which translates as “Big hadron accelerator”.

Hadron Collider. A photo

Abbreviated LHC (Large Hadron Collider, abbreviated as LHC) is a charged particle accelerator in colliding beams, designed to accelerate protons and heavy ions (lead ions) and study the products of their collisions. The collider was built at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research), located near Geneva, on the border of Switzerland and France. The LHC is the largest experimental facility in the world. More than 10,000 scientists and engineers from more than 100 countries have participated and are participating in construction and research.

It is named large because of its size: the length of the main ring of the accelerator is 26,659 m; hadronic - due to the fact that it accelerates hadrons, that is, heavy particles consisting of quarks; collider (English collider - collider) - due to the fact that particle beams are accelerated in opposite directions and collide at special collision points.

Specifications

The accelerator is supposed to collide protons with a total energy of 14 TeV (that is, 14 teraelectronvolts or 14 1012 electron volts) in the center of mass system of incident particles, as well as lead nuclei with an energy of 5 GeV (5 109 electron volts) for each pair of colliding nucleons. At the beginning of 2010, the LHC had already somewhat surpassed the previous champion in terms of proton energy - the proton-antiproton collider Tevatron, which until the end of 2011 worked at the National Accelerator Laboratory. Enrico Fermi (USA). Despite the fact that the adjustment of the equipment stretches for years and has not yet been completed, the LHC has already become the highest energy particle accelerator in the world, surpassing other colliders in energy by an order of magnitude, including the RHIC relativistic heavy ion collider operating at the Brookhaven Laboratory (USA). ).

The luminosity of the LHC during the first weeks of the run was no more than 1029 particles/cm 2 s, however, it continues to increase constantly. The goal is to achieve a nominal luminosity of 1.7·1034 particles/cm 2 s, which is of the same order of magnitude as the luminosities of BaBar (SLAC, USA) and Belle (English) (KEK, Japan).

The accelerator is located in the same tunnel formerly occupied by the Large Electron-Positron Collider. The tunnel with a circumference of 26.7 km was laid underground in France and Switzerland. The depth of the tunnel is from 50 to 175 meters, and the tunnel ring is inclined by about 1.4% relative to the ground. To hold, correct and focus proton beams, 1624 superconducting magnets are used, the total length of which exceeds 22 km. The magnets operate at a temperature of 1.9 K (-271 °C), which is slightly below the superfluid temperature of helium.

LHC detectors

The LHC has 4 main and 3 auxiliary detectors:

• ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)
• ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS)
• CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid)
• LHCb (The Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment)
• TOTEM (TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement)
• LHCf (The Large Hadron Collider forward)
• MoEDAL (Monopole and Exotics Detector At the LHC).

ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb are large detectors located around beam collision points. The TOTEM and LHCf detectors are auxiliary, located at a distance of several tens of meters from the beam intersection points occupied by the CMS and ATLAS detectors, respectively, and will be used along with the main ones.

The ATLAS and CMS detectors are general-purpose detectors designed to search for the Higgs boson and "non-standard physics", in particular dark matter, ALICE - to study quark-gluon plasma in heavy lead ion collisions, LHCb - to study the physics of b-quarks, which will allow to better understand the differences between matter and antimatter, TOTEM is designed to study the scattering of particles at small angles, such as occurs during close spans without collisions (the so-called non-colliding particles, forward particles), which allows you to more accurately measure the size of protons, as well as control the luminosity of the collider, and, finally, LHCf - for the study of cosmic rays, modeled using the same non-colliding particles.

The seventh detector (experiment) MoEDAL, designed to search for slowly moving heavy particles, is also associated with the operation of the LHC.

During the operation of the collider, collisions are carried out simultaneously at all four points of intersection of the beams, regardless of the type of accelerated particles (protons or nuclei). At the same time, all detectors collect statistics simultaneously.

Acceleration of particles in a collider

The speed of particles in the LHC on colliding beams is close to the speed of light in vacuum. The acceleration of particles to such high energies is achieved in several stages. In the first stage, low-energy Linac 2 and Linac 3 linear accelerators inject protons and lead ions for further acceleration. Then the particles enter the PS booster and then into the PS (proton synchrotron) itself, acquiring an energy of 28 GeV. With this energy, they are already moving at a speed close to light. After that, particle acceleration continues in the SPS (Proton Super Synchrotron), where the particle energy reaches 450 GeV. Then the bunch of protons is sent to the main 26.7-kilometer ring, bringing the energy of the protons to a maximum of 7 TeV, and at the collision points, the detectors record the events that occur. Two colliding proton beams, when completely filled, can contain 2808 bunches each. At the initial stages of debugging the acceleration process, only one bunch circulates in a bundle several centimeters long and of small transverse size. Then they begin to increase the number of clots. The clusters are located in fixed positions relative to each other, which move synchronously along the ring. The clumps in a certain sequence can collide at four points of the ring, where the particle detectors are located.

The kinetic energy of all hadron bunches in the LHC when it is completely filled is comparable to the kinetic energy of a jet aircraft, although the mass of all particles does not exceed a nanogram and they cannot even be seen with the naked eye. Such energy is achieved due to the speed of particles close to the speed of light.

The bunches go through a full circle of the accelerator faster than 0.0001 sec, thus making more than 10 thousand revolutions per second

Goals and objectives of the LHC

The main task of the Large Hadron Collider is to find out the structure of our world at distances less than 10–19 m, "probing" it with particles with an energy of several TeV. To date, a lot of indirect evidence has already accumulated that on this scale, physicists should open up a certain “new layer of reality”, the study of which will provide answers to many questions of fundamental physics. What exactly this layer of reality will turn out to be is not known in advance. Theorists, of course, have already proposed hundreds of various phenomena that could be observed at collision energies of several TeV, but it is the experiment that will show what is actually realized in nature.

Search for New Physics The Standard Model cannot be considered the ultimate theory of elementary particles. It must be part of some deeper theory of the structure of the microworld, the part that is visible in collider experiments at energies below about 1 TeV. Such theories are collectively referred to as " New physics' or 'Beyond the Standard Model'. The main task of the Large Hadron Collider is to get at least the first hints of what this deeper theory is. To further combine fundamental interactions in one theory, various approaches are used: string theory, which was developed in M-theory (brane theory), supergravity theory, loop quantum gravity, etc. Some of them have internal problems, and none of them have experimental confirmation. The problem is that to carry out the corresponding experiments, energies are needed that are unattainable at modern particle accelerators. The LHC will enable experiments that were previously impossible and will likely confirm or disprove some of these theories. Thus, there is a whole range of physical theories with dimensions greater than four that suggest the existence of "supersymmetry" - for example, string theory, which is sometimes called superstring theory precisely because without supersymmetry it loses physical meaning. Confirmation of the existence of supersymmetry would thus be an indirect confirmation of the truth of these theories. Studying top quarks The top quark is the heaviest quark and, moreover, it is the heaviest elementary particle discovered so far. According to the latest results from the Tevatron, its mass is 173.1 ± 1.3 GeV/c 2 . Because of its large mass, the top quark has so far been observed only at one accelerator, the Tevatron; other accelerators simply lacked the energy to produce it. In addition, top quarks are of interest to physicists not only in their own right, but also as a “working tool” for studying the Higgs boson. One of the most important channels for the production of the Higgs boson at the LHC is the associative production together with the top quark-antiquark pair. In order to reliably separate such events from the background, it is first necessary to study the properties of the top quarks themselves. Studying the mechanism of electroweak symmetry One of the main goals of the project is to experimentally prove the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle predicted by the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs in 1964 within the framework of the Standard Model. The Higgs boson is a quantum of the so-called Higgs field, when passing through which particles experience resistance, which we represent as corrections to mass. The boson itself is unstable and has a large mass (more than 120 GeV/c2). In fact, physicists are not so much interested in the Higgs boson itself, but in the Higgs mechanism of symmetry breaking of the electroweak interaction. Study of quark-gluon plasma It is expected that approximately one month per year will be spent in the accelerator in the mode of nuclear collisions. During this month, the collider will accelerate and collide in detectors not protons, but lead nuclei. In an inelastic collision of two nuclei at ultrarelativistic speeds at a short time a dense and very hot lump of nuclear matter is formed and then decays. Understanding the phenomena occurring in this case (the transition of matter to the state of quark-gluon plasma and its cooling) is necessary to construct a more perfect theory of strong interactions, which will be useful both for nuclear physics and for astrophysics. The search for supersymmetry The first significant scientific achievement experiments at the LHC can prove or disprove "supersymmetry" - the theory that any elementary particle has a much heavier partner, or "superparticle". Study of photon-hadron and photon-photon collisions The electromagnetic interaction of particles is described as an exchange of (in some cases virtual) photons. In other words, photons are carriers electromagnetic field. Protons are electrically charged and surrounded by an electrostatic field, respectively, this field can be considered as a cloud of virtual photons. Any proton, especially a relativistic proton, includes a cloud of virtual particles as an integral part. When protons collide with each other, the virtual particles surrounding each of the protons also interact. Mathematically, the process of particle interaction is described by a long series of corrections, each of which describes the interaction by means of virtual particles of a certain type (see: Feynman diagrams). Thus, when studying the collision of protons, the interaction of matter with high-energy photons, which is of great interest for theoretical physics, is also indirectly studied. A special class of reactions is also considered - the direct interaction of two photons, which can collide both with an oncoming proton, generating typical photon-hadron collisions, and with each other. In the mode of nuclear collisions, due to the large electric charge of the nucleus, the influence electromagnetic processes is of even greater importance. Testing exotic theories Theorists at the end of the 20th century put forward a huge number of unusual ideas regarding the structure of the world, which are collectively called "exotic models". These include theories with strong gravity on the scale of about 1 TeV, models with a large number of spatial dimensions, preon models in which quarks and leptons themselves are composed of particles, models with new types of interaction. The fact is that the accumulated experimental data is still not enough to create a single theory. And all these theories themselves are compatible with the available experimental data. Since these theories can make specific predictions for the LHC, experimenters plan to test the predictions and look for traces of certain theories in their data. It is expected that the results obtained at the accelerator will be able to limit the imagination of theorists, closing some of the proposed constructions. Other Also pending discovery physical phenomena outside of the Standard Model. It is planned to study the properties of W and Z bosons, nuclear interactions at superhigh energies, the processes of production and decay of heavy quarks (b and t).

Specialists of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), after a series of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced the discovery of a new particle, previously predicted by Russian scientists, called a pentaquark.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an accelerator designed to accelerate elementary particles (in particular, protons).

It is located in France and Switzerland and belongs to the European Council for Nuclear Research (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire, CERN, CERN).

At that time, it was not clear to scientists exactly how much the particle they discovered corresponded to the predictions of the Standard Model. By March 2013, physicists had enough data on the particle to officially declare it to be the Higgs boson.

On October 8, 2013, the British physicist Peter Higgs and the Belgian Francois Engler, who discovered the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking (due to this violation, elementary particles can have mass), was awarded Nobel Prize in physics for "the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that provided insight into the origin of the masses of elementary particles."

In December 2013, thanks to data analysis using neural networks, CERN physicists first traced the decay of the Higgs boson into fermions - tau leptons and b-quark and b-antiquark pairs.

In June 2014, scientists working at the ATLAS detector, after processing all the accumulated statistics, refined the results of measuring the mass of the Higgs boson. According to their data, the mass of the Higgs boson is 125.36 ± 0.41 gigaelectronvolts. This is almost identical - both in value and in accuracy - with the result of scientists working on the CMS detector.

In a February 2015 publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, physicists stated that possible cause the almost complete absence of antimatter in the Universe and the predominance of ordinary visible matter could serve as the movement of the Higgs field - a special structure where the Higgs bosons "live". Russian-American physicist Alexander Kusenko from the University of California at Los Angeles (USA) and his colleagues believe that they managed to find the answer to this universal riddle in the data that were the Large Hadron Collider during the first stage of its work, when the boson was discovered Higgs, the famous "God Particle".

On July 14, 2015, it became known that specialists from the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), after a series of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced the discovery of a new particle, previously predicted by Russian scientists, called a pentaquark. Studying the properties of pentaquarks will allow us to better understand how ordinary matter works. The possibility of the existence of pentaquarks Dmitry Dyakonov, Maxim Polyakov and Viktor Petrov, employees of the Konstantinov St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics.

The data collected by the LHC at the first stage of the work allowed physicists from the LHCb collaboration, engaged in the search for exotic particles on the detector of the same name, to "catch" several particles from five quarks at once, which received the temporary names Pc (4450) + and Pc (4380) +. They have a very large mass - about 4.4-4.5 thousand megaelectronvolts, which is about four to five times more than that of protons and neutrons, as well as a rather unusual spin. By their nature, they are four "normal" quarks glued together with one antiquark.

The statistical certainty of a discovery is nine sigma, which is equivalent to one random error or detector failure in one case in four million billion (10 to the power of 18) attempts.

One of the goals of the second launch of the LHC will be the search for dark matter. It is assumed that the detection of such matter will help solve the problem of hidden mass, which, in particular, consists in an anomalously high rotation speed. outer areas galaxies.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Map with the location of the Collider plotted on it

To further combine fundamental interactions in one theory, various approaches are used: string theory, which was developed in M-theory (brane theory), supergravity theory, loop quantum gravity, etc. Some of them have internal problems, and none of them have experimental confirmation. The problem is that to carry out the corresponding experiments, energies are needed that are unattainable at modern particle accelerators.

The LHC will make it possible to conduct experiments that were previously impossible to conduct and will probably confirm or refute some of these theories. So, there is a whole range of physical theories with dimensions greater than four that suggest the existence of "supersymmetry" - for example, string theory, which is sometimes called superstring theory precisely because without supersymmetry it loses its physical meaning. Confirmation of the existence of supersymmetry would thus be an indirect confirmation of the truth of these theories.

Study of top quarks

Construction history

27 km underground tunnel designed to house the LHC booster

The idea for the Large Hadron Collider project was born in 1984 and was officially approved ten years later. Its construction began in 2001, after the completion of the work of the previous accelerator - the Large Electron-Positron Collider.

The accelerator is supposed to collide protons with a total energy of 14 TeV (that is, 14 teraelectronvolts or 14 10 12 electron volts) in the center of mass system of incident particles, as well as lead nuclei with an energy of 5.5 GeV (5.5 10 9 electron volts) for each pair of colliding nucleons. Thus, the LHC will be the most high-energy elementary particle accelerator in the world, surpassing its closest competitors in terms of energy by an order of magnitude - the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, which is currently operating at the National Accelerator Laboratory. Enrico Fermi (USA), and the RHIC Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven Laboratory (USA).

The accelerator is located in the same tunnel formerly occupied by the Large Electron-Positron Collider. The tunnel with a circumference of 26.7 km was laid at a depth of about one hundred meters underground in France and Switzerland. To contain and correct proton beams, 1624 superconducting magnets are used, the total length of which exceeds 22 km. The last one was installed in the tunnel on 27 November 2006 . The magnets will work at 1.9 K (-271°C). The construction of a special cryogenic line for cooling magnets was completed on November 19, 2006.

Tests

Specifications

The process of accelerating particles in a collider

The speed of particles in the LHC on colliding beams is close to the speed of light in vacuum. Acceleration of particles to such high speeds is achieved in several stages. In the first stage, low-energy Linac 2 and Linac 3 linear accelerators inject protons and lead ions for further acceleration. Then the particles enter the PS booster and then into the PS (proton synchrotron) itself, acquiring an energy of 28 GeV. After that, particle acceleration continues in the SPS (Proton Super Synchrotron), where the particle energy reaches 450 GeV. Then the beam is directed to the main 26.7-kilometer ring and at the collision points, the detectors record the events taking place.

Power consumption

During the operation of the collider, the estimated energy consumption will be 180 MW. Estimated energy costs for the entire canton of Geneva. CERN does not generate power itself, with only standby diesel generators.

Distributed Computing

To control, store and process data that will come from the LHC accelerator and detectors, a distributed computing network LCG is being created. L HC C omputing G RID ) using grid technology. For certain computing tasks, a distributed computing project will be involved [email protected].

Uncontrolled physical processes

Some experts and members of the public express concern that there is a non-zero probability that the experiments conducted in the collider will get out of control and develop a chain reaction, which, under certain conditions, could theoretically destroy the entire planet. The point of view of supporters of catastrophic scenarios associated with the operation of the LHC is presented on a separate website. Because of these sentiments, the LHC is sometimes deciphered as Last Hadron Collider ( Last Hadron Collider).

In this regard, the theoretical possibility of the appearance of microscopic black holes in the collider, as well as the theoretical possibility of the formation of antimatter clots and magnetic monopoles, followed by a chain reaction of capturing the surrounding matter, is most often mentioned.

These theoretical possibilities were considered by a special CERN group, which prepared a corresponding report, in which all such fears are recognized as unfounded. English theoretical physicist Adrian Kent published a scientific article criticizing the safety standards adopted by CERN, because the expected damage, that is, the product of the probability of an event by the number of victims, is, in his opinion, unacceptable. However, the maximum upper estimate of the probability of a catastrophic scenario at the LHC is 10 -31 .

As the main arguments in favor of the groundlessness of catastrophic scenarios, references are made to the fact that the Earth, the Moon and other planets are constantly bombarded by streams of cosmic particles with much higher energies. Also mentioned successful work previously commissioned accelerators, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC at Brookhaven. The possibility of the formation of microscopic black holes is not denied by CERN specialists, however, it is stated that in our three-dimensional space such objects can appear only at energies that are 16 orders of magnitude higher than the energy of beams in the LHC. Hypothetically, microscopic black holes can appear in experiments at the LHC in the predictions of theories with extra spatial dimensions. Such theories do not yet have any experimental evidence. However, even if black holes are created by particle collisions in the LHC, they are expected to be extremely unstable due to Hawking radiation and will evaporate almost instantly in the form of ordinary particles.

On March 21, 2008, Walter Wagner filed a lawsuit in the federal district court of Hawaii (USA). Walter L. Wagner) and Luis Sancho (eng. Luis Sancho), in which they, accusing CERN of trying to arrange the end of the world, demand that the launch of the collider be banned until its safety is guaranteed.

Comparison with natural speeds and energies

The accelerator is designed to collide such particles as hadrons and atomic nuclei. However, there are natural springs particles, the speed and energy of which is much higher than in the collider (see: Zevatron). Such natural particles are found in cosmic rays. The surface of the planet Earth is partially protected from these rays, but, passing through the atmosphere, particles of cosmic rays collide with atoms and molecules of the air. As a result of these natural collisions, many stable and unstable particles are born in the Earth's atmosphere. As a result, natural radiation background. The same thing (collision of elementary particles and atoms) will also occur in the LHC, but with lower speeds and energies, and in much smaller quantities.

microscopic black holes

If black holes can be created during the collision of elementary particles, they will also decay into elementary particles, in accordance with the principle of CPT invariance, which is one of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics.

Further, if the hypothesis of the existence of stable black micro-holes was correct, then they would be formed in large quantities as a result of the bombardment of the Earth by cosmic elementary particles. But most of the high-energy elementary particles arriving from outer space have electric charge, so some of the black holes would be electrically charged. These charged black holes would be captured magnetic field Earth and, if they were really dangerous, would have destroyed the Earth long ago. The Schwimmer mechanism that makes black holes electrically neutral is very similar to the Hawking effect and cannot work if the Hawking effect does not work.

In addition, any black holes, charged or electrically neutral, would be captured by white dwarfs and neutron stars(which, like the Earth, are bombarded by cosmic radiation) and destroyed them. As a result, the lifetimes of white dwarfs and neutron stars would be much shorter than actually observed. In addition, destructible white dwarfs and neutron stars would emit additional radiation that is not actually observed.

Finally, theories with extra spatial dimensions that predict the emergence of microscopic black holes do not contradict experimental data only if the number of extra dimensions is at least three. But with so many extra dimensions, billions of years must pass before black hole cause significant damage to the earth.

Strapelki

Eduard Boos, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences from the Research Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University, holds opposing views, denying the occurrence of macroscopic black holes at the LHC, and, consequently, "wormholes" and time travel.

Notes

1. The ultimate guide to the LHC (English) P. 30.
2. LHC: key facts. "Elements big science". Retrieved September 15, 2008.
3. Tevatron Electroweak Working Group, Top Subgroup
4. LHC synchronization test successful
5. The second test of the injection system was intermittent, but the goal was reached. "Elements of big science" (August 24, 2008). Retrieved September 6, 2008.
6. LHC milestone day gets off to fast start
7. First beam in the LHC - accelerating science .
8. Mission complete for LHC team . physicsworld.com. Retrieved September 12, 2008.
9. A stable circulating beam is launched at the LHC. "Elements of big science" (September 12, 2008). Retrieved September 12, 2008.
10. An incident at the Large Hadron Collider delays experiments indefinitely. "Elements of Big Science" (September 19, 2008). Retrieved September 21, 2008.
11. The Large Hadron Collider will not resume operation until spring - CERN. RIA Novosti (September 23, 2008). Retrieved September 25, 2008.
12. http://press.web.cern.ch/Press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR14.08E.html
13. https://edms.cern.ch/file/973073/1/Report_on_080919_incident_at_LHC__2_.pdf
14. https://lhc2008.web.cern.ch/LHC2008/inauguration/index.html
15. Repairing damaged magnets will be more extensive than previously thought. "Elements of big science" (November 09, 2008). Retrieved November 12, 2008.
16. Schedule for 2009. "Elements of big science" (January 18, 2009). Retrieved 18 January 2009.
17. CERN press release
18. The work plan of the Large Hadron Collider for 2009-2010 has been approved. "Elements of Big Science" (February 6, 2009). Retrieved April 5, 2009.
19. The LHC experiments.
20. Pandora's Box opens. Vesti.ru (September 9, 2008). Retrieved September 12, 2008.
21. The Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments
22. Dimopoulos S., Landsberg G. Black Holes at the Large Hadron Collider Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 (2001)
23. Blaizot J.-P. et al. Study of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions at the LHC.
24. Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions LHC Safety Assessment Group
25. A Critical Review of the Risks of Accelerators. Proza.ru (May 23, 2008). Retrieved September 17, 2008.
26. What is the likelihood of a catastrophe at the LHC?
27. Judgment Day
28. Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
29. Explanation of why the LHC will be safe
30. http://environmental-impact.web.cern.ch/environmental-impact/Objects/LHCSafety/LSAGSummaryReport2008-es.pdf (Spanish)
31. http://environmental-impact.web.cern.ch/environmental-impact/Objects/LHCSafety/LSAGSummaryReport2008-de.pdf (German)
32. http://environmental-impact.web.cern.ch/environmental-impact/Objects/LHCSafety/LSAGSummaryReport2008-fr.pdf (fr)
33. H. Heiselberg. Screening in quark droplets // Physical Review D. - 1993. - T. 48. - No. 3. - S. 1418-1423. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.48.1418
34. M. Alford, K. Rajagopal, S. Reddy, A. Steiner. Stability of strange star crusts and strangelets // The American Physical Society. Physical Review D. - 2006. - T. 73, 114016.