Atom-smasher sets energy record

[John S]

The Hadron Collider (CERN) has set a new world energy record at 1.18 Trillion electron volts, but this is small beer to the 7 Trillion (yes 7 Trillion) the collider is expected operate at.

Should be nice and warm around the French-Swiss border when it fully gets on song.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8385891.stm

[Jericoke]

An electron volt is an exceedingly small amount of energy.

According the CERN website, 1 million million eV is the equivelent energy of a mosquito in flight.  At full power the LHC will be producing as much energy as a whopping SEVEN flying mosquitos.

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/Science/Glossary-en.php#E

Electronvolt (eV)
A unit of energy or mass used in particle physics. One eV is extremely small, and units of a million electronvolts, MeV, or thousand million electronvolts, GeV, are more common. The latest generation of particle accelerators reaches up to several million million electronvolts, TeV. One TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito.

[John S]

Whoa! at a cost of 6.5 to 7 Billion for the Collider that's some expensive mosquitos.

I know thay are trying to re-create the Big Bang but maybe they will end up with Jurassic park instead.