Posted on 05/21/2015 7:41:33 AM PDT by BenLurkin
On Wednesday night, two opposing beams of protons were steered into each other at the four collision points spaced around the LHC's tunnel.
The energy of the collisions was 13 trillion electronvolts - dwarfing the eight trillion reached during the LHC's first run, which ended in early 2013.
...
Prof David Newbold, from the University of Bristol, works on the CMS experiment. He said the new energies present new technical challenges.
"When you accelerate the beams they actually get quite a lot smaller - so the act of actually getting them to collide inside the detectors is really quite an important technical step," Prof Newbold told BBC News.
"13 TeV is a new regime - nobody's been here before."
...
"The special thing about LHC is not just the energy we can collide the beams at, it's also the number of collisions per second, which is also higher than any other accelerator in history.
"The reason for that is - like the Higgs boson last time - what we're principally looking for is incredibly rare decay particles. And the more collisions you have per second, the more chance you have of finding something that's statistically significant."
So the build-up that will now unfold, from one or two bunches of protons to thousands, will make even more history. But these early tests are critical to make sure that the 6.5 TeV beams can be steered onto collision course without damaging any of the detectors, or the massive magnets that steer the protons and accelerate them to very near the speed of light.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I say we collide politicians inside an accelerator.
We’d get more significant data that way.
How long can I run my iPhone on 13 TeV?
Thanks to that, I just had an image pop in my head of Barney Frank face-planting with Hillary. You’re despicable.
They become... Bawnery Frinton.
Good for them, so long as they don't cross the beams and reach total protonic reversal.
We've got enough problems.
Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Yes, this is a real discussion on the internet, not a well-known one, but it's out there. http://woodbetweenworlds.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-we-are-living-in.html
My calculations show that 13 trillion electronvolts = 1.3E-10 Joules.
Color me unimpressed.
I get 2.0828295345e-6 joules using;
1eV = 1.602176565e-19 joules.
Math is hard.
Lol!
Dern. I wuz thinkin’ ‘bout buildun one of them there atom smashers in my back yard. Guess I’ll pass on that idea.
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