CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.
31 May 2012
Image above: Experimental physicists from the ATLAS experiment discussing their work at CERN. More data means more analysis work for physicists.
The Large Hadron Collider is busy supplying the experiments with an impressive number of collisions at an energy of 4 TeV per beam. After just 2 months of beam this year the LHC has already delivered 7 inverse femtobarns of data – more than the entire 2011 run.
An inverse femtobarn is a measure of integrated luminosity – or the amount of data that experiments can gather. An inverse femtobarn represents about 100 million million collisions.
The LHC has also beaten peak luminosity records, reaching 6,6 × 1033 cm -2 s -1 on 26 May, compared to last year's maximum of 3,6 × 1033 cm -2 s -1.
The accumulation of large amounts of data from collisions is crucial to increasing the chances of discoveries at the LHC.
Note:
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.
Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.
More information:
Quantum Diaries archive: Why don't we just say collision rate?:
http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/03/02/why-don%E2%80%99t-we-just-say-collision-rate/
Image, Text, Credit: CERN.
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