Lhc Exotica
LHC hits data milestone
As two protons collide inside LHC, they create an energetic explosion that gives rise to new and exotic particles
We'll have to take physicists' word for it that "one inverse femtobarn" is a lot. That's the milestone recently reached by the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider. Inside the circular machine, which is buried 574 feet (175 meters) underground near Geneva, Switzerland, scientists accelerate protons to speeds approaching that of light, and then crash them into each other to produce energetic wrecks that can give rise to new and exotic particles. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN physics lab began operating in 2008, and has been ramping up its power levels and the intensity of its particle beams. Today (June 17) at 4:50 a.m. ET (10:50 a.m. local time), the amount of data accumulated by two LHC experiments called ATLAS and CMS clicked over from 0.999 to 1 inverse femtobarn. A "barn" is a unit of area, approximately equal to the cross-sectional area of the nucleus of a uranium atom. The prefix "femto" means 10-15 or 0.000000000000001, and an inverse femtobarn is a measurement of particle collisions per area in other words, how many atoms actually smash together inside the machine. The more particle collisions that LHC creates, the better its chances of discovering new physics. "This is a superb achievement, which demonstrates the outstanding performance of the accelerator and of the operation team," Fabiola Gianotti, spokeswoman for the ATLAS experiment, said in a statement.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments