# Accelerating a mass at very high acceleration @very low time

1. Dec 8, 2014

### emam

Dear all,
I would like to know if someone has experience with projectile accelerator (or mass accelerators).
I am working in space research field and here is my question:
I would like to know if we can find a system or a machine permitting to apply very high acceleration (like 10'000 g) at very low time (like 20-30 ms) to an object?

Usually with a centrifuge we can acheive this kind of acceleration, but in very longer time).
However, does someone know a way to have a device to give at least a shock of 10000 g at few ms?
Many thanks

2. Dec 8, 2014

### Staff: Mentor

10'000 g at 25 ms gives 2500 m/s over ~30 m distance. Those numbers are close to the HARP project and not so far away from the railgun designs that are tested.

3. Dec 8, 2014

### jerromyjon

How much shock does a proton at LHC get?

4. Dec 9, 2014

### Staff: Mentor

Define "shock" (in a way that makes sense for relativistic particles).

And I think it would be better to start a separate thread for accelerations in particle accelerators, as they are orders of magnitude higher.

5. Dec 9, 2014

### jerromyjon

How many g forces does a proton experience in max acceleration at LHC, it is relevant to the OP in the sense of a "technological limit". He specifically asked for someone with this experience.

6. Dec 9, 2014

### Staff: Mentor

It is a technological limit for particles close to the speed of light with one elementary charge per proton mass, something impossible to achieve for anything larger than a proton.
As seen in the frame of earth, they have a curvature radius of about 3km and a speed extremely close to the speed of light, that gives an acceleration of about 3*1013 m/s2 (about 3 trillion g). Smaller accelerators achieve larger values as the speed is very similar but the curvature radius is smaller.

7. Dec 9, 2014

### Staff: Mentor

It's not especially relevant as a technological limit, because the technologies used to accelerate protons along a circular path in the LHC are not applicable to accelerating macroscopic objects in a straight line. The answer in #2 is more to the point.

However, because I'm a sucker for off the wall questions I grabbed a metaphorical envelope and calculated the average radial acceleration of a particle in the LHC ring to be something around $10^{12} g$.