Question

1-The Large Hadron Collider in Europe smashes together near-light speed protons to discover new fundamental particles of nature. As part of the detection process, the “debris” from the collision is made to pass through a magnetic field. What is the purpose of this magnetic field?

2-If you are outside on a dark night you might see an aurora (i.e. northern or southern lights). What produces this display and why is it most common at middle to high latitudes?

Answer 1

2) Our sun is 93 million miles away. But its effects extend far beyond its visible surface. Great storms on the sun send gusts of charged solar particles hurtling across space. If Earth is in the path of the particle stream, our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere react.When the charged particles from the sun strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they excite those atoms, causing them to light up. What does it mean for an atom to be excited? Atoms consist of a central nucleus and a surrounding cloud of electronsencircling the nucleus in an orbit. When charged particles from the sun strike atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, electrons move to higher-energy orbits, further away from the nucleus. Then when an electron moves back to a lower-energy orbit, it releases a particle of light or photon.The lights typically are seen in the far north – the nations bordering the Arctic Ocean – Canada and Alaska, Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland and Russia. But strong displays of the lights can extend down into more southerly latitudes in the United States. And of course, the lights have a counterpart at Earth’s south polar regions. Beacuse magnetic field diflects charged particles from sun towards north and south pole that is why auroras are formed over there.