Large Hadron Collider: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:48, 10 September 2013

Revision as of 09:25, 19 September 2013

Line 20:

The term ''[[hadron]]'' refers to [[composite particle]]s composed of [[quark]]s [[bound state|held together]] by the [[strong force]] (as [[atom]]s and [[molecule]]s are held together by the [[electromagnetic force]]). The best-known hadrons are [[proton]]s and [[neutron]]s; hadrons also include [[meson]]s such as the [[pion]] and [[kaon]], which were discovered during [[cosmic ray]] experiments in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A ''[[collider]]'' is a type of a [[particle accelerator]] with directed beams of [[elementary particle]]s. In [[particle physics]] colliders are used as a research tool: they accelerate particles to very high [[kinetic energy|kinetic energies]] and let them impact other particles. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the [[subatomic]] world and the laws of nature governing it. Many of these byproducts are produced only by high energy collisions, and they decay after very short periods of time. Thus many of them are hard or near impossible to study in other ways.

==Purpose==