Large Hadron Collider hits world-record proton acceleration
The newly upgraded Large Hadron Collider (LHC) just broke a world record with its proton beams. The LHC, located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, restarted on 22 April after a planned three-year hiatus, during which a number of upgrades were made to the facility. These improvements are already being put to the test. In restarting and preparing for its new operating phase, called Run 3, the LHC has already beaten a previous record. This particle accelerator is both the largest and most powerful in the world, and in a test run conducted shortly after being switched back on, the LHC accelerated beams of protons to a higher energy than ever before.
“Two LHC pilot beams of protons were accelerated to the record energy of 6.8 TeV per beam. This operation is part of the activities to recommission the machine in preparation of LHC Run 3, planned for the summer of 2022,” CERN tweeted.
With the upgrades implemented during shutdown, the energy of the LHC’s proton beams was set to increase from 6.5 to 6.8 teraelectronvolts (TeV). For reference, one teraelectronvolt is equivalent to 1 trillion electron volts – in terms of kinetic energy that’s roughly equal to the energy of a mosquito flying. While this might seem like a very small amount of energy, for a single proton it’s an incredible amount of energy. The LHC is used to explore cosmic mysteries ranging from investigating possible candidates for dark matter to breaking apart our understanding of physics.
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