Scale of LHC experiments(Doubt)

[Henrique Mello]

What is the scale (in meters) that LHC have already reached?

[timo]

27000 in circumference. But I have the faint feeling this is not what you are actually asking about.

[Henrique Mello]

You're right Actually I'm asking the scale LHC reached in its research. I mean: we know how physics works at 10^-n meters. I want to know this "n". But thanks for trying to help me

[pwagen]

Well, atoms are something in the scale of 10^-15 m. A Higgs boson, which is what they're looking for, is an elementary particle, so would be a few orders of magnitude smaller still.

 

According to this informative flash thingy (which shouldn't be taken as gospel), the biggest elementary particles are something like 10^-18. So I guess we can "safely" assume the Higgs boson would be no bigger than that.

 

http://htwins.net/scale2/

 

However, at that scale, the concept of size has very little meaning, so saying they're working on that particular scale might be very wrong anyway.

Edited April 7, 2013 by pwagen

[timo]

To make a long story short: The length scale l you are looking for is roughly given by the quotient of the Planck constant h times speed of light c and the energy E per proton (a few TeV, look it up): l=(h*c)/E.

 

The concept behind this number is that you can resolve structures in the order of size of the wavelength of your projectile. One can argue to what this extend this concept sensibly applies to collider physics or yields sensible information. But I am pretty sure it is the number that you are looking for in this thread, give or take a few Pi.

 

Elementary particles have size zero by standard definition, btw.

Edited April 7, 2013 by timo