LHC Officially Becomes Most Powerful Accelerator
Written by Nicholos Wethington
Well, they've done it: at 2028 GMT, 29 November 2009 the Large Hadron Collider officially became the most powerful particle accelerator ever built by humans. One of the proton beams in the LHC was powered up to 1.05 teraelectron volts (TeV) at that time, and three hours later both of the beams were powered to 1.18 TeV. This breaks the previous record held by the Fermilab accelerator in Chicago, which has held the record of .98 TeV since 2001.
Despite the initial problems that the largest scientific instrument ever built had this past year, things seem to be progressing smoothly. Last week, the proton-proton beams were collided for the first time. This latest record accelerated the protons to 0.9997 times the speed of light.
No new collisions were seen at this latest milestone, as it is just part of the process of powering up the beams to the projected 7 TeV needed for the first experiments of next year. Each beam will be powered up to 3.5 TeV to smash protons in order to re-create the conditions that existed near the time of the Big Bang, and help physicists understand the fundamental nature of matter. The 7 TeV goal should be reached by the end of December, and the first collisions at the amazing energies of the LHC will occur in early 2010.
Director-General of CERN Rolf Heuer said the recent progress has been fantastic. "However, we are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010," he said. "I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then."
The LHC, is a 27 km (17 mile) long circular tunnel composed of super-cooled, superconducting magnets that runs underneath the town of Geneva, Switzerland. By colliding protons together at such energetic speeds, some fundamental questions about what matter is made of, and what the conditions were like around the earliest times of our Universe may be answered.
You can follow further advancements of the LHC at CERN's site, on Twitter or right here at Universe Today!
Source: CERN
Filed under: Physics
Tags: CERN accelerator, LHCRelated stories on Universe Today
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November 30th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
That's very good news!!
Looking forward to more success with the collisions in 2010.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
"- You call that an accelerator?" [Takes out LHC.]
Seriously, this is big news! … well, somewhat seriously.
December 1st, 2009 at 12:56 am
Vey exciting news. Hoping we stumble upon something that changes everything.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:59 am
"Well, they've done it: at 2028 GMT, 29 November 2009 the Large Hadron Collider officially became the most powerful particle accelerator ever built by humans. "
I knew cats were up to something.
December 1st, 2009 at 6:37 am
I presume they are calibrating the CMS and other detectors as they climb the energy scale. The statement that v = .9997c might need to be checked. At a TeV energy this is about a thousand times the mass of a proton. The energy of a particle of mass m moving at velocity v is
E = gamma*mc^2
for gamma = 1/sqrt{1 – (v/c)^2} the velocity is eqsily computed v = 0.9999995c.
Cheers LC
December 1st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Sweet mother of awesome.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Awesome. Can't hide forever, Higgs! LHC is gonna get you.
If anyone missed this before, here is the link for Kate McAlpine's LHC rap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Nuts, they had a power outage today. Fortunately it was not catastrophic and the power generators kicked in to save the magnets. *Whew*