Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the ALICE detector (Image: ALICE)
For the first time, on the night of 20 May 2015, protons collided in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN at the record-breaking energy of 13 TeV.
These test collisions were part of the systems set up that includes adjusting the collimators that protect the machine and detectors from particles that stray from the edges of the beam. These devices, which absorb stray particles were fine tuned to ensure that the LHC magnets and detectors are fully protected.
- Desperately seeking Susy – understanding supersymmetry (Le News – 07.10.15)
- CERN experiment proves 1960’s particle theory (Le News – 15.07.15)
The start of the LHC’s second run is planned for early June.
Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the CMS detector (Image: CMS)
Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the ATLAS detector (Image: ATLAS)
Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the LHCb detector (Image: LHCb)
Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the TOTEM detector (Image: TOTEM)
More on this:
Protons set to collide at 13 TeV to prepare for Physics (CERN website – in English)
Zeki Ergas says
My intuitive impression is that this LHC project is largely useless since it cannot tell us anything about the origin of the Universe. The amount of energy used in it is very, very insignificant, something like 0.0000000 …1 percent of what is needed to come close to the energy level of the Big Bang. Besides the Bing Bang theory is being abandoned, replaced apparently by one that says the Universe was always there, has always been expanding, and will always expanding … Well, OK, for a while, until the next theory comes along… The truth is we human beings will never understand what is REALLY going on in the Universe: We are too tiny, too insignificant creatures. Infinity is something totally foreign to our understanding. So spending hundreds of billions of dollars or euros for ever larger colliders – when the money could be utilized for the betterment of life on our planet, and of humanity, strikes me as a basically stupid enterprise. We human beings should be … infinitely more modest and admit that we are limited little creatures. To begin with let us abolish nuclear weapons before they end up … abolishing us. Let us do what we can to stop the destruction of our planet and human civilization. That would be … infinitely more intelligent.