Where is the most expensive treasure in Russia, and possibly on the whole planet? Upon learning the answer, all treasure hunters will be delighted at the same time, but, on the other hand, will be disappointed, because this treasure cannot be bought or stolen, since it is located underground and has a length of several kilometers. The name of such a mysterious object is the Hadron Collider.
Of course, it is a valuable place for scientists and, perhaps, causes great interest among the so-called diggers. The abandoned accelerator-storage complex belongs to the Institute of High Energy Physics and is located in Protvino. In fact, the collider was simply mothballed and now the underground object attracts many adventure seekers with its history.
Grandiose project
The collider in Protvino really has impressive dimensions, because the length of the ring is twenty-one kilometers. The main tunnel stretches for five kilometers, and the depth at which it is located varies from twenty to sixty meters, it all depends on the natural topography. For all the years of the construction of the Hadron Collider in Protvino, the underground territory was filled with a variety of rooms that were connected to the surface of the earth by mines created perpendicular to the object itself.
Who knows, maybe if the Soviet program were completed before the LHC, then it would have become the starting point of all the sensational discoveries in the physics of the future.
Many years before the decision was made: to build the largest collider in the USSR, a special purpose settlement called Serpukhov-7 was created in the Moscow region. It was a research base for the Institute of High Energy Physics. In that distant 1960, scientists selected the area according to geological data. And it was in this part of the region that the soil had positive properties for placing underground objects, since it was the bottom of the sea in antiquity. In addition, this zone is protected from earthquakes by a natural relief.
The appearance of Protvino
Five years after the appearance of Serpukhov-7, it was decided to define it as an urban-type settlement and rename it in honor of the Protva - Protvino river flowing here. In addition to the idea of creating a hadron collider, in Protvino in 1967 the largest accelerator was built by then standards. They became the proton synchrotron, which is valid today. With an emitted energy of 109 electron-volts, the U-70 synchrotron is the highest energy in the entire Russian Federation.
Since at that time the Union had the means to conduct basic physical research, the eighties were marked by the creation of a grandiose project, presented in the form of an accelerator-storage complex or, more simply, a kind of hadron collider. In Protvino all these years, the IHEP base continued to operate with enviable stability.
If we consider the object from a technical point of view, then it can be compared with the construction of the Moscow Metro and its ring, but several times more expensive and more complicated. Why did the collider in Protvino need to be placed precisely underground? There are two main criteria: maintaining a constant ideal temperature for scientific research (minus two hundred seventy-one degrees Celsius) and the minimum access of external terrestrial interference to equipment operating at high frequencies. Despite the fact that the prospects of the collider in Protvino initially did not have any specific benefit for the science of the future, research could provide a huge layer of information about the structure of our world from the point of view of physics.
New accelerator
The development of the latest proton-proton collider project for an energy of one thousand and twelve electron-volts was fueled by the idea of creating the world's most powerful accelerator. All work on the construction of a collider in Protvino was carried out under the guidance of Academician Anatoly Logunov. He was a theoretical physicist and an employee of IHEP. Moreover, according to his plans, the existing synchrotron-70 was supposed to be the initial link in the acceleration for the new accelerator.
The project, now abandoned by the Hadron Collider in Protvino, suggested two steps: the first involved the adoption of protons with energy of seventy gigaelectron-volts and produced by the synchrotron, he subsequently raised them to an intermediate value of six hundred giga-electron-volts; the second step (ring) would raise protons to their maximum.
And the first and second steps of the collider in Protvino were to be placed in one ring tunnel, the dimensions of which are several times larger than the existing ring line of the metro in Moscow. Moreover, the construction of the tunnel was carried out by those who cut through passages for underground trains in the thickness of the earth.
A large twenty-one kilometer ring contains a pipe from the first stage filled with warm magnets, as well as two pipes from the second ring filled with cold magnets having super-passing properties. They are designated using the abbreviation "UNK" and the numbers from 1 to 3. These magnets are just accelerators, acting on a particle beam, they direct it in the right direction. The tunnel of an abandoned collider in Protvino in the Moscow region itself is designed so that if something happens, the workers can get to the right place and perform maintenance. Its width is much larger than in a similar CERN facility.
So, we will analyze in detail how such a giant works? After the formation of a beam of particles, their speed is accelerated in a small accelerator - a synchrotron. Then, with the help of the first channel connecting the large ring and the small accelerator, they move to the main place of their work towards the warm magnets, moving counterclockwise. Further, having accelerated to the required speed, they fall on superconducting magnets. By this time, in the small U-70, the next portion of the particle beam is being prepared, which follows the other channel into the large ring, and, moving clockwise, takes the place of the previous ones on warm magnets. The second group of particles is also converted to superconducting magnets and collides with the first.
The unique work of scientists
By the 80s of the last century, no country has been able to create a competitive and efficient accelerator car. Even the American and Geneva objects, despite their power, could not provide science with the very necessary tool for carrying out the latest experiments in the field of physical phenomena.
At that time, the USSR already had an accelerator located in Dubna and created in 1956. In those years, it was the most powerful, its energy was ten gigaelectron-volts, but the length was only two hundred meters, however, it was on it that physicists made their sensational discoveries, for example, they registered the existence of an antimatter core. The new collider project included the probability of detecting a neutrino flux located at a very distant distance from the ring itself.
Simply put, particles at high speed should be redirected towards the Irkutsk region - to Lake Baikal. All this was assumed without the use of a tunnel, of course. That is, particles removed from the ring penetrated through the thickness of the earth, and, breaking thousands of kilometers, had to fall to the bottom of the lake and register with a special detector.
This detector is actually located near Lake Baikal. After all, particles, due to the round shape of our planet, move in the underground space at a certain angle, so the device was laid three and a half kilometers from the largest fresh water reservoir, at a depth of one kilometer. It is called the Neutrino Telescope. The Baikal particle catcher was put into operation in 1998, and it worked for a decade.
How the collider was built
An abandoned collider in Protvino began to be built in 1983. The mountain method was used to create it: twenty-six vertical shafts were dug. Until 1987, construction took place in a sluggish mode, until the government issued a decree on the resumption of activity. Then, a year later, the USSR for the first time acquired overseas tunneling complexes manufactured by Lovat. It was using these machines that workers were able to speed up the tunnel digging regime.
The feature of the tunnel-laying aggregates was that they not only dug with high accuracy, but at the same time lined a thirty-centimeter concrete layer along the tunnel arch. And in the concrete itself, metal insulation was mounted.
The collapse of the USSR and subsequent difficulties
By the beginning of 90, about seventy percent of the main ring tunnel had been completed, and the injection channel was already ready for ninety-five percent (it was supposed to be used to transport the beams). Of the twelve planned structures, only three were built, they were in the nature of engineering and technical support. Ground objects were built much faster. So more than twenty sites with industrial buildings on several floors were arranged, to which water pipes, heating routes and high-voltage power lines were laid.
But precisely this period was marked by the most disastrous in financing. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the construction site was abandoned almost immediately. But preserving the collider turned out to be too expensive, and it could also damage the environment, since flooding of tunnels with groundwater is a direct danger to the ecological state of the entire Protvino area. And how to get into the Hadron Collider in the coming years would be a big mystery and problem (in the case of resuming the project).
Creating a magnetic system
Despite all the difficulties, the underground ring of the tunnel was still closed, but most importantly, the accelerator zone was created only three quarters of the entire facility. Superconducting magnets were available, but in very small quantities, since their production was not easy, because each magnet had to weigh up to ten tons, and according to the requirements of the project there should be two thousand five hundred pieces.
In general, it is this magnetic system that is the most important link in the entire accelerator. In fact, the greater the speed of the particles, the more difficult it is to direct them in a circle, so the magnetic fields must be very strong. In addition, all particles should be focused so that they could not repel each other in flight, so the introduction of focusing magnets was also required in the magnetic system.
Injection tunnel
But was there anything completely ready? Yes, this is an injection tunnel, which they were able to complete one hundred percent. Equipment with a vacuum system was ready for him, a pumping, control and monitoring system was developed. The pressure in the stainless steel vacuum pipe was supposed to be seven millimeters of mercury, and it was this that was the basis of the entire structure. The total length of all such vacuum tubes in the injection channel, as well as the available two rings of the accelerator, tunnels for the extraction and emission of the proton beam, was planned at seventy kilometers.
Success is near!
Having gotten so close to the equator of the construction site, a monumental hall called "Neptune" was erected. Its dimensions are really amazing - fifteen by sixty square meters. Actually, it was created just for installing the accelerator itself and control equipment measuring particle charge in its premises.
Inside the main tunnel, at each mark of one and a half kilometers, other halls for large equipment were created. Plus, there was also a special room, intended to accommodate a variety of cables and pipes.
Commissioning the LHC
By 1994, by common efforts, they were still able to finish the 21-kilometer-long section, the most difficult of all available due to the presence of groundwater. In the same year, all the money left from the distant Soviet times finally ended. The cost of the entire collider was equal to the approximate cost of building a nuclear power plant. By 1995, workers were no longer talking about any salary payments; accordingly, there were no finances for the purchase of necessary equipment.
In 1998, a severe crisis came, and the situation with the collider worsened due to the launch of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). Ultimately, being much more powerful than the Protvinsky collider, the LHC completely blocked his path to work. The reanimation of the Russian facility was postponed indefinitely.
Of course, just to take and drop such a structure was categorically against the rules. Every year, officials allocate huge amounts of money to this “suitcase without a handle”. A salary is paid to guards and workers pumping water from underground structures. Also, the budget is spent on concreting various manholes into the collider in Protvino. How to get into any abandoned building? It's simple - you just have to make a passage.
Revival Ideas
The last decade has constantly come up with new ideas for the restoration and renovation of the collider complex. For example, inside the tunnel you can place an induction drive of super-passable power, which could control the stability of electric networks throughout the Moscow region.
There are also proposals for the formation of a mushroom farm inside the collider, however, the lack of money is the main obstacle to all proposed projects. And burying it under a concrete layer is the most expensive option. Today, all available artificial and huge caves remain a monumental monument, meaning the pipe dreams of Soviet physicists.
High-tech equipment, manufactured but not installed, was sold to China when the state created a tokamak. Naturally, the best minds of physicists left from a cash-strapped perspective in America and European countries. And the fate of a lonely giant has been in doubt for many years.
Preservation was made in 2014. The object was handed over to the construction team, reporting to the research institute. In the same year, the gates were removed for fire safety, they divided the tunnel into sectors, covered all the holes where the water came from, and also dismantled the ore yards, with the help of which the collider was erected. Of course, for fans of abandoned casting a security system on the entire perimeter of the accelerator.
Collider status for today
And yet, how to get into the abandoned hadron collider? Protvino is a small village where now mainly summer cottages of Muscovites are located. Almost near the houses are concrete ruins, near which in winter and summer a security booth flaunts with the inscription: "The object is guarded." Of course, the door there is always locked, but if it is good to dig clay near the building, then you can get inside and go down the shaft shaft, which consists of fifteen spans.
Inside, you should be prepared for the sound of dripping condensate. Despite the fact that the object is not used, there is electricity in some places. Sheets of metal are also visible on the walls, with which they were sheathed at the very beginning of construction. After descending to the very bottom, at the end of the corridor the very tunnels described above appear. They do not have a lighting system, so because of the darkness they seem endless. Since waterproofing was also not carried out everywhere, the sounds of a working drainage pumping out ground water will be heard in the distance. Well, the air inside will instantly plunge anyone into the subway atmosphere.
The size of the main ring is much larger than the Moscow metro tunnel. It goes underground for many tens of kilometers. In general, the magnitude of the work that comes before your eyes will amaze everyone who dares to explore the abandoned collider.