Mar 29 2010

CERN LHC

Published by at 6:44 am under Nuclear Physics,Quantum Mechanics

According to what one reads, the CERN LHC is set to start colliding 3.5 TeV proton beams tomorrow, if they can get the beams, running for days now, lined up by then.  The LHC will obtain a variety of downscattered energies, however photons of the same energy and phase can add together in the same measurement.  In terms of discrete photons, it should be a continuous spectrum with a peak near the highest energy that the instrument can effectively measure.

With particle masses on the other hand, nobody knows for sure.  It could be an extension upon the “zoo of elementary particles that the experimentalists were discovering in their particle accelerators” * prior to the development of the Standard Model of particle physics.

In some ways it would appear easier to work with one elementary particle instead of sixteen or more.

 

* Smolin, Lee, The Trouble with Physics, Houghton Mifflin Company, c. 2006, p. 54

(The Standard Model of particle physics was not the main focus of Smolin’s book.)

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