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Well, either we've found the Higgs boson, or Fred's just put the kettle on
The Barrel Toroid, the world's largest superconducting electromagnet, has been set to full power last November 9. The magnet is built from eight 5 meter by 25 meter rectangular coils cooled to -269 degrees Celsius, and carries a current of 20,000 amps. The energy in its coils is equivalent to around 10,000 cars traveling at 70 kilometers per hour.
As part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the magnet will be used to bend the paths of particles formed from the collision of protons or lead ions accelerated to near light speeds.
The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and will be used to investigate why particles have mass. It will also be used to look into the nature of the as-yet undetected dark mass that's thought to make up all but four percent of the universe.
Researchers also hope to detect the Higgs Boson, a predicted subatomic particle that's supposed to have answers to life, the universe, and everything within three years. Ready your pan-galactic gargleblasters folks, we've got a whole lot of controlled sub-atomic collisions scheduled.
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