Large Hadron Collider smashes own energy record

This is about as sexy as creating 3.5 trillion electron volts gets
This is about as sexy as creating 3.5 trillion electron volts gets

The Large Hadron Collider has tripled the amount of energy it usually creates, with CERN announcing 3.5 trillion electron volts have passed through the machine's tunnels.

Two 3.5 trillion electron beams have been, er, beamed in both directions through the tunnel and now all that's needed is for the beams to be smashed together in a bout of scientific awesomeness.

This is set to happen in the next few days, with scientists hoping they will uncover more information about dark matter and energy as a whole.

Sound design

"At just after 5:20 this morning, two 3.5 TeV proton beams successfully circulated in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time," explain CERN on its website.

"This is the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator, and an important step on the way to the start of the LHC research programme."

Speaking about the achievement, CERN's Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers, said: "Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC's overall design, and the improvements we've made since the breakdown in September 2008."

In a statement about the LHC's power, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, notes that the energy beams the LHC is delivering at the moment is quite staggering, explaining: "LHC's availability for the operators was over 65 per cent: it usually takes a new accelerator years to reach that level of availability."

Let just hope they know what they are doing as we don't want the thing to break down. Again.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.