Professors Frank Close and Tejinder Virdee explain why physicists smash particles together and what happens in a particle collision

Particle collisions

It has been called a 'Big Bang Machine', but what is the Large Hadron Collider and what do scientists hope it will discover? Presented by Robert Llewellyn, the three video tracks in this album address the science of collisions, the purpose of particle acceleration and the construction of the LHC at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva. This cutting edge machine may detect the elusive Higgs boson, and with it reveal the origin of mass, the missing piece in our understanding of matter. If it succeeds, it will begin the next era of research into the nature of the universe. This material forms part of The Open University course S207 The physical world.

Share Particle collisions

Sign up to save your podcasts

Particle collisions

Particle collisions

More shows like The physical world: collisions - for iPod/iPhone

Bon départ: beginners' French - Audio

David Hume: 18th Century Philosopher - Audio

Writing Poetry - Audio

Reading Political Philosophy: From Machiavelli to Mill - Audio

Portales: beginners' Spanish - Audio

Fossil Detectives - for iPod/iPhone

Predicting Volcanoes - for iPod/iPhone

Andante: beginners' Italian - Audio

Bon départ: beginners’ French second edition - for iPod/iPhone

Search Engines of the Future: The Pharos project - for iPad/Mac/PC