Take it to the Limit: Mammoth Machines and the Tiniest Particles

Abstract: You may have heard of CERN, home of the world’s largest particle collider, in the news. If not, you’ll learn about it here! Physicists around the world use the collider at CERN to smash together larger particles to unleash their innards. The sheer size of the collider is impressive: it’s the largest man-made machine ever built. Why on Earth do physicists need such a massive machine? This talk will cover how we study the smallest building blocks of matter using the collider and the famous ATLAS experiment (a mammoth in its own right). There will be an accessible introduction to particle physics, how we detect particles too small to see, and why we collide particles. We’ll lead up to talking about how Canada is helping to build the future of particle physics at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. At the end of the talk, I hope you’ll have more wonder about what the world around us is made of; more incredulity at the awesome machines that humanity has built; and feel proud that Canada is involved.