LHC breaks its own energy record, still less powerful than Lady Gaga
By Laura June 
posted March 19th 2010 2:14PM
posted March 19th 2010 2:14PM
The Large Hadron Collider is no stranger to setting energy records: back at the end of November it broke the 0.98 TeV record by hitting the 1.18 TeV mark. Well, the problem beleaguered collider's just handily surpassed itself -- this time with a truly stunning 3.5 TeV -- with beams of protons on record as having circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volt. Now, we're not scientists or anything, but that sure is a lot of volts! CERN's moving on later this week and will begin colliding the beams so they can check out the tiniest particles within atoms in the hopes of finding out more about how matter's made up. We look forward to hearing all about that, too -- but until then, we made do by reading the source over and over.
I wonder if this has anything to do with all those quakes lately...
@Beastage no, but you know what, i bet its what caused all the toyota cars to go haywire these days
@kongmw
You are both correct. Both the quakes and our earth are having violent reactions to Lady Gaga's "music" with Toyota Prius' trying to kill themselves and mother earth herself shaking violently. Currently the LHC is too weak to stop her. This is its true purpose.
@Beastage Yeah, we're still calibrating the LHC so that it will destroy the US.
We're just hitting South America and Haiti for target practice. Soon, Europe will destroy America, muhahahaha!
P.S. If you really believe, even for a moment, that the LHC has anything to do with the earthquakes I pity you. Please, research plate tectonics.
AACK! There's so much confused science here it's disturbing.
Here's the deal:
A Volt is not power. It's a potential. An electron-volt is power. So you could convert eV to horsepower or joules but you cannot convert volts to horsepower.
3.5TeV is, in fact 35 trillion eV.
EACH proton has 3.5TeV of energy. There are many protons traveling in packs. Standing in the ring would kill you. There's a LOT of energy.
The protons' energy is due to their speed. It's kinetic energy.
@agentcdog Should read in fact 3.5 trillion.
@agentcdog
As someone else pointed out, eV is energy, not power.
So what would happen if you stood in front of one of these beams? Would they go right through you? I guess since the whole line is cooled to almost 0 kelvin you would freeze instantly. But I was wonder if something so small going so fast would have any effect upon something so big going so slow.
Don't know, but I'd recommend covering your crotch with your hand.
@Octantis
Here's your answer, although he did not die!
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/10/05/the-man-who-stuck-his-head-inside-a-particle-accelerator/
but I'm sure this silly russian was dealing with much lower energy levels than the LHC deals with.
haha best article title ever.
:]
Keep em' coming Engadget! :D
Nice, I like articles like this.
There is a reasonable possibility that the large hadron collider could create a small black hole and destroy the planet. I realize we don't expect that, but the possibility is there and it has not been fully analyzed. This machine is the test. No person or nation has the right to take that risk for everyone. It is an act of war because of the consequenses if they're wrong. If there's even a samll chance of it causing planetary destruction,, we must wait 50 - 75 years and then send it out into deep space to test it.
@mreilly No. This is wrong. There is a reasonably high probability of creating black holes in this thing. However, these are not stable black holes and would go away very quickly. In order for a black hole to survive it must have the right parameters and be in a hospitable environment for black hole growth. Read the Wikipedia article.
@Octantis, about what would happen if the beam hit you... Each packet of protons at the much lower power tevatron in Chicago had about the momentum of a 90mph fastball. This would be over three times that.
No wait WTF it's not 2012...
Each proton beam has an energy level of 3,5 TeV, so the energy that would be turned into pure particles and their momentum in case of a head on collision is 7 TeV. (which is still only half of the theoretical maximum that has been calculated, so they still have a long way to go!)
So wait, next week is when they create a mini black hole that devours the Earth in 8 minutes? Ok, cool.
@ agentcdog
We've discovered through the email cover-up in England and America regarding Global warming, that you can't necessarily trust scientists when they have an emotional predudice anymore than other people. If something can be done, scientists are tempted to want to try it, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
Waiting a little longer to put this out in space won't kill anybody, but setting it off on planet earth might kill everybody.
Our environmentalists go to extremes to protect some frog, and push Global warming with questionable basis, but are doing little to make sure this is safe.
If it weren't for the fact that if you're wrong, everyone dies, I might say ok; but one error here, and it's the end. There is absolutely no room for error here, and that's a bad place to be in science theory.
@mreilly
Dude, I'm pretty sure that any small black hole they make will dissipate into nothing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but only stars provide enough mass for black holes to sustain themselves, no?
@mreilly Only Fox believes it's a "cover up". The evidence is still undeniably in favor of global warming. The world is still in agreement on this, and only die-hard idiots deny it.
It's amusing seeing how Fox & Co can portray a cold winter as evidence that the planet is not growing warmer [on average]. The whole point of *climate change* is the rapid changes in weather patterns that can cause snow storms, flooding, drought etc. The world's not going to become a tropical paradise.
You and your kind will look so silly in the future history books. Then again denial is a natural reaction for humans that don't like what they hear.
As everyone already pointed out, one electron volt is equal to the (absolute value of the) electrical charge of an electron multiplied by a volt.
Elementary charge = 1.60217653(14)×10^−19 C
1 Volt = 1 J/C
--> 1 eV = 1.60217653(14)×10^−19 J which is a unit of energy
Also, somebody said "One TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito." This might seem very small. However, this means that the energy of an entire mosquito is concentrated into a single proton, which is much smaller. So it's actually pretty high.
anyways... 1.21 TERA ELECTRON VOLTS!?!?!?!?
@EAgle
just elaborating... So when you have all of that energy in one proton and billions of protons flying around with that much energy think about a billion mosquitos flapping a wing at the same time. That adds up to a lot of force. That is why 3.5 TeV is a big number.