First protons clash in the LHC

2009/11/24 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Fisika

strong>

CERN said yesterday that the first collisions of protons occurred in the LHC. The world's largest accelerator has been launched last weekend. For the first time, the accelerator detectors have installed two beams of protons turning in the opposite direction on a 27-kilometer accelerator and yesterday the first shocks were detected.

"It is a great achievement to go so far in such a short time," said CERN director Rolf Heuer in the press release. It broke down as soon as I started it in September last year and it took fourteen months to repair the accelerator and start the proton beams, but there are the first results.

They are still only the first tests, which work at low energy level at 450 GeV. For this Christmas will accelerate 1,200 GeV of energy, which will move to 3,500 GeV in 2010. This would still mean half of the energy they supposedly can get.

We in the magazine Elhuyar Zientzia eta Teknika last April collected how is the biggest accelerator in history and what will investigate.