Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd090808s.gif title: "Tales from the Road - CERN, pt. 1" - originally published 9/8/2008 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE! (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php)
You're missing a few nines in there. Initial turn on will be at 450 GeV, and the goal is 7 TeV.
Plug that into the relativistic equation for speed in terms of energy: v = c*sqrt(1 - (mc^2/E)^2) .
The result for 450 GeV is .999997c.
For 7 TeV it's .99999998c.
lanwatch
Sep10-08, 05:16 AM
Aircraft carrier at 60 km/h??
Maybe more like a 1000 kg car at 17 km/h (http://www.google.com/search?q=sqrt(7+TeV+*1e10*2%2F(1000Kg))+in+Km%2Fhour). Still impressive though.
n6tr
Sep10-08, 06:48 PM
This article is very misleading. Those snow capped mountains in the background are NOT The Alps as it suggests. They are The Jura. The alps are behind you. You can almost see the house I lived in where the particle is escaping - in Sergy-Haut.
BlackGriffen
Sep10-08, 07:32 PM
Aircraft carrier at 60 km/h??
Maybe more like a 1000 kg car at 17 km/h (http://www.google.com/search?q=sqrt(7+TeV+*1e10*2%2F(1000Kg))+in+Km%2Fhour). Still impressive though.
In Jorge's defense he was talking about the entire beam, not just a bunch. To get the kinetic energy of the aircraft carrier described, however, they'd need to have over 200,000 bunches in the ring, which is absurd. In the past I recall the point of comparison being a semi truck, which would yield a much more realistic number of bunches.