Large Hadron Collider bangs out new world energy record

By William Atkins
Monday, 30 November 2009 20:08

Science - Energy

On Monday, November 30, 2009, the CERN Large Hadron Collider, in Europe, sent two beams of protons around its accelerator track at an energy of 1.18 tera-electron volts for a new world record, beating out the previous record holder Fermilab in the United States.


According to the CERN press release “LHC sets new world record,” the previous world record was 0.98 tera-electron volts (TeV), which was set at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, United States (near Chicago).

Fermilab, operated by the Fermi Research Alliance, is a joint venture between the University of Chicago (Illinois) and the Universities Research Association (URA).

The high-energy Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab held the world record since 2001.

Late in the evening (at 21:28 local time) on Sunday, November 29, 2009, beam 1 at the CERN Large Hadron Collider was accelerated from 450 GeV to 1050 GeV (1.05 TeV)—that’s 1.05 trillion electron volts.

Then at 00:44:30 (local time), in the first hour of November 30th, both LHC beams were successfully accelerated to 1.18 TeV.

One electron volt (eV) is defined as a unit of energy that is equal to the amount of kinetic energy gained by one unbound ‘electron’ when it accelerates through an electrostatic potential difference of one ‘volt.’

In other words, it is calculated by multiplying 1 volt (or 1 joule divided by 1 coulomb) by the electron charge (which is 1.60217653(14) x 10^-19 coulomb).

Canceling out the units of coulomb in the multiplication, the result means that 1 eV = 1.60217653(14) x 10^-19 joules.

Page two continues with a comparision of 1 TeV and the flight of a mosquito.