LHC Shatters Records, Collides Protons at 13 TeV
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Wednesday smashed protons at 13 tera electronvolts (TeV) breaking its earlier energy record when it detected the Higgs Boson in 2012.
LHC resumed operations this year after being shut two years for repair and refit to be able to circulate proton beams at energies higher than 8 TeV it achieved during its first run. Earlier this year, 6.5 TeV beams were circulated but collisions during the testing processes until now have seen far lower energies. Wednesday's collision was the first time the collider smashed protons at energies that will be used for physics, though the collision itself was also part of the test run.
"These test collisions were to set up systems that protect the machine and detectors from particles that stray from the edges of the beam," CERN said in a press release adding that beams collisions will continue on Thursday.
When experiments begin later this year, the number of protons in the beams will significantly be increased to have more collisions per second, from the two that now circulate to 2,800, BBC reports. This increases odds of detecting rare particle decays that scientists hope will reveal details of dark matter and other exotic phenomenon.
