The LHC: Exploring Fundamental Matter (or a Creator of Black Holes?)

Evan Frodermann ‘02
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
University of Minnesota

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland built to explore some of the fundamental aspects of particle physics.  However, recent media stories questioned the safety of the machine and explored the purpose of the billion dollar machine. In this presentation, I will briefly address some of the more extreme safety concerns and explain a few theoretical aspects of the physics present within this experiment.  I will explore how the LHC will attempt to answer questions about the origin of mass and particularly a state of new matter called the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) which only existed naturally in the universe instantly after the Big Bang.