Yesterday, when I said,
The LHC has officially become the world’s highest-energy collider, by colliding protons at 2.36 TeV (above the Fermilab Tevatron’s record of 1.96 TeV),
I misunderstood a point in the press release that wasn’t heavily stressed. The LHC has become the world’s highest-energy accelerator, reaching counter-rotating energies of 1.18 TeV each, but the beams were not collided at this high energy yet. Last week, they were collided at low energy, and this week, they have been accelerated to high energy, but not collided. The two beams passed by each other in the interaction region, held apart by electric fields. A few protons on the fuzzy outer edge of the distribution might have collided, but the big collisions are yet to come.
Small steps, yet very fast from one step to the next.
Leave a Reply