The film's main subject is the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, a massive, mileslong particle accelerator aiming to find the Higgs boson by duplicating the Big Bang
in microcosm. The LHC is the world's largest crash-test facility, including liquidhelium-cooled magnets and complex microelectronics (Jones, 2021). The LHC was
intended to assist scientists in answering important unanswered issues in particle
physics. The extraordinary energy it generates may potentially produce some
unanticipated effects that no one has ever imagined.
It functions by colliding two high-energy proton beams targeted at each other
to create enormous new particles. The experiments at the LHC use detectors to
analyze the plethora of particles created by collisions in the accelerator. These
experiments are carried out through international collaborations of scientists from
various institutes (Sutton, 2021).
The two general-purpose detectors at the LHC are the Compact Muon Solenoid
(CMS) and ATLAS. They investigate a wide range of physics topics, from the search
for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and dark matter particles. They utilize
different technical solutions and a different magnet-system architecture, despite
having the same scientific aims. While ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is
a particle collider that studies the physics of strongly interacting matter at high
energy densities, where quark-gluon plasma occurs, and The Large Hadron Collider
beauty (LHCb) experiment focuses on examining a type of particle known as the
"beauty quark," or "b quark," to better understand the subtle variations between
matter and antimatter.
Peter Higgs, François Englert, and four other theorists suggested the Higgs
boson in 1964 to explain why certain particles have mass. The ATLAS and CMS
experiments at CERN's LHC in Switzerland confirmed its existence in 2012.
Schwarzschild (2013) reported that Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 2013 for their discovery.
The mass of the Higgs boson was estimated to be between 125 and 126
Gigaelectronvolts (GeV) when it was initially discovered. That figure has now been
adjusted even further, with an uncertainty of 0.1 percent. The Higgs boson, according
to the researchers, has a mass of 125.35 GeV (Irving, 2019). The data for this new
result was collected between 2011 and 2016. The Higgs boson is an unstable particle
that decays swiftly into lighter particles. The CMS detector saw the Higgs boson
decaying into two Z bosons in 2011 and 2012, before decaying further into four leptons.
It was discovered decomposing into two photons in 2016.
The CERN-Brochure (2016) states that while CERN's research is largely
driven by curiosity, it has a tremendous influence on society and everyday life. To
achieve ambitious scientific goals, sophisticated equipment and new technologies
must be developed, making CERN and the partner institutions and laboratories
innovators. Through knowledge transmission, this has a huge impact on society and
the economy.
Many spinoff technologies have emerged because of particle physicists'
technical challenges, which include processing millions of data quickly, employing
distributed computers to solve complicated problems, and producing electromagnetic
fields to accelerate and contain charged particles. Even as mathematics is utilized to
comprehend the theoretical structures describing particles, particle physics has made
significant contributions to mathematics. (National Research Council, 2006, p.17).
The significant benefits for the HL-LHC were the value of training for earlystage researchers, technical or industrial spillovers to industry, cultural effects for
the public, academic publications for scientists, and the public-good value for citizens.
CERN's scientific advances push the boundaries of technology, which has a beneficial
influence on society worldwide. Although the Laboratory's primary objective is basic
research in particle physics, it also has the responsibility of training the next
generation of scientists and bringing nations together. (Bastianin & Florio, 2018)
According to Fabiola Gianotti, the Director-General of CERN, “Places like
CERN contribute to the kind of knowledge that not only enriches humanity, but also
provides the wellspring of ideas that become the technologies of the future.”
Florio & others (2015) calculated the probability distribution of costs and
benefits for the LHC from 1993 until its planned decommissioning in 2025, and we
find that there is a 92 percent chance that benefits outweigh costs, with an expected
net present value of around 3 billion euros, not including the unpredictable economic
value of any new physics discovery. We contend that the assessment technique
provided here may be duplicated for any large-scale research facility, therefore
assisting decision-making on competing projects with a socioeconomic appraisal in
addition to other evaluation criteria.
Bastianin, A., & Florio, M. (2018, August 31). LHC upgrade brings benefits
beyond physics. CERN Courier. https://cerncourier.com/a/lhc-upgrade-bringsbenefits-beyond-physics/
CERN-Brochure. (2016, December). The Impact of CERN.
https://home.cern/sites/default/files/2018-07/CERN-Brochure-2016-005-Eng.pdf
Florio, M., Forte, S., & Sirtori, E. (2015, July 20). Cost-Benefit Analysis of the
Large Hadron Collider to 2025 and beyond. Arxiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05638
Irving, M. (2019, October 27). CERN precisely measures the mass of the
Higgs boson. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/physics/higgs-boson-mass-measured/
Jones, D. G.C. (2021, December 22). Large Hadron Collider. Encyclopedia
Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Large-Hadron-Collider
National Research Council. (2006, October 10). Revealing the Hidden Nature
of Space and Time: Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/11641/chapter/4
Sutton, C. (2021, November 18). CERN. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/CERN
Schwarzschild, B. M. (2013, December). Englert and Higgs are awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics. Physics Today.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2196