LHC vs Cosmic Rays: What's the Difference?

[Dmitry67]

Short question.

I know that COLLIDING beams are much more effective than when moving particle hits a target in observers reference frame. That is why they make a collider.

However, when Oh My God particles are observed they actually hit something that something does not move.

So, when we say that we can't reproduce Cosmic Rays energies on LHC, what exactly do we compare? What reference frame do we use?

Do we compare energies per particle in our rest frame (ignoring that it is a collider) or not?

 

[Vanadium 50]

First, please don't call them "Oh My God particles". That's like calling San Francisco "Frisco".

To compare, we use energies in the center-of-mass frame. The highest energy cosmic rays have energies in the center of mass frame (assuming proton-proton collisions) of about 750 TeV. The LHC is designed to run proton beams at 14 TeV, and lead beams at about 1150 TeV.

 

[Norman]

Short question.

I know that COLLIDING beams are much more effective than when moving particle hits a target in observers reference frame. That is why they make a collider.

However, when Oh My God particles are observed they actually hit something that something does not move.

So, when we say that we can't reproduce Cosmic Rays energies on LHC, what exactly do we compare? What reference frame do we use?

Do we compare energies per particle in our rest frame (ignoring that it is a collider) or not?

You compare apples to apples in the same reference. Just use a lorentz transformation on the energy to make the change.

BTW what is an Oh My God particle?

 

[genneth]

BTW what is an Oh My God particle?

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/OhMyGodParticle/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray

 

[aggy]

An oh my god particle is when the gluon actually breaks an creates a stable black hole, the RHIC merely stretced a few gluons for a fraction of time, see this link to see what happened when they did that...http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0318_050318_pin_blackhole.html The LHC will do much better.