LHC Sets Collision Record - New Era For Particle Physics

CERN News: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sets collision record - new era in the history of particle physics.

Spotlight on CERN - LHC First Physics -- On March 30th 2010, first high-energy collisions took place at 7 TeV in the LHC, creating a phenomenal quantity of data. This not only marked the start of a new era for particle physics but also presents an enormous challenge in the field of computing, in terms of data transfer, storage and processing.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, a synchrotron intended to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at an energy of 7 trillion electronvolts (1.12 microjoules) per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus. The term hadron refers to particles composed of quarks. It is expected that it will address the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing our understanding of the deepest laws of nature. The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as much as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the intention of testing various predictions of high-energy physics, including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Ha...
• http://lhc.web.cern.ch/
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