LHC tops Tevatron beam energy---November 29

[Martin]

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2542

 

"A few minutes ago, one of the beams of the LHC was ramped up to an energy of 1180 GeV, besting the Tevatron’s top beam energy of 980 GeV.

 

Update: Actually the beam was lost at 1070 GeV, which is still a record high energy."

 

==========================

 

An update says that they now have gotten each beam up to 1180 GeV. It also gives a figure for the brightness (how many particles fly past per second).

 

So with two beams each at 1.2 TeV they could be looking at collisions with a total energy of 2.4 TeV. Already this is somewhat higher than what has been produced at the older Fermilab collider---the socalled "Tevatron".

Edited November 30, 2009 by Martin

[Severian]

I posted the official 'update' on this in the news thread.

[npts2020]

If I am hijacking this thread, I apologize, but since there are already threads about the LHC I didn't want to start another. I have two questions about the "beams" circulating in the LHC. Firstly, I have heard the path followed described as being a spiral, is this true even when no collisions are being done like during stability tests? Secondly, how long can the beam be held stable before substantial decay sets in (last I heard was about 10 hours) and will it ever be possible to maintain it indefinitely?

 

Well, maybe that was three questions, but then math was never my strongest subject.