Monday 30 November 2009

1Tev

Large Hadron Collider sets world energy record (BBC) by accelerating a beam of protons to 1 trillion electron volts. Theoretically at least the LHC could produce a Higgs Boson even at this energy (Higgs is thought to be around 170Gev according to theTevatron experiments) though you need more than 1Tev to get enough energy into the collisions in the first place. However the real experiments don't start until June 2010 (at the time of writing) and we don't as yet have a real idea other than simulations about what particles and particle decays we're going to see at >1Tev collision energies, so the first part of the work will be to research what kinds of decay signatures will be produced and then start analysing those patterns.

From CERN's Glossary Pages

Electronvolt (eV)
A unit of energy or mass used in particle physics. One eV is extremely small, and units of a million electronvolts, MeV, or thousand million electronvolts, GeV, are more common. The latest generation of particle accelerators reaches up to several million million electronvolts, TeV. One TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito.

For persons worrying about the LHC's safety keep checking this page to find out if the LHC has destroyed the planet. Just in case that page is wrong you can also check here as well.  If they both agree then the LHC has destroyed the planet.

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