The Large Hadron Collider: Traveling Back in Time
In The Large Hadron Collider: Traveling Back in Time, narrator Kate Yule describes how the Large Hadron Collider aims to illustrate how the Universe came into being. In the collider, time dilation can be seen in action where beams of protons smash into each other at high speed. The particles created by this process help us to understand the early Universe. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Einstein & Hawking: Masters of Our Universe, a mind-bending documentary that tells the story of how the two most famous scientists of the 20th Century transformed our understanding of the Universe and changed the world.
Lesson Express
Q: What is the purpose of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?
A: The LHC tries to recreate the early conditions of the Universe in order to understand how it came into its current state after the Big Bang.
Q: What happens in the LHC?
A: Protons collide in the middle of the detector at high speeds close to the speed of light. Once they collide, new particles are created.
Q: Why is time dilation important for the study of the new particles created?
A: It’s important because the lifespan of the particles is very, very short, and time dilation allows the particles to travel farther before they decay, giving scientists an opportunity to study them.
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