CERN claimed its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s highest energy particle accelerator.
This morning it accelerated its twin beams of proton to 1.18 TeV, breaking a record set by the US Fermi Tevatron collider in 2001 of 0.09 Tev.
But CERN director general, Rolf Heuer, said there’s a lot to do with the LHC before it starts doing physics in 2010. He said: “I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.”
CERN said that the latest achievement meant that the LHC is progressing smoothly towards its objective of first physics in early 2010.
The team at CERN will now increase beam intensities before delivering quantities of collision data. High intensity is required to give proton-proton collision rates that are meaningful.
