Quote:
Originally Posted by a system
thought it was roughly the same energy as the comis rays?
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There have been cosmic rays measured with much higher energies than the LHC will generate.
The LHC will generate collisions of nominally 14 TeV, that is 14 x 10
12 eV. There was the so called
"OMG" (Oh My God) particle that was observed at 10
20 eV, seven orders of magnitude higher energey.
This research group is looking for ones above 10
19 eV.
And I got unlazy,
here is my earlier posting about cosmic ray research.
@ Pippin - I don't see the obsession with temperature. Temperature is not the critical thing here, in fact, describing the temperature of these very tiny, very transient plasmas is probably a pretty vague thing. The critical thing is energy. I think, in the press releases, they talk about temperature because that is something the public can kind of relate to. They can't relate to TeV.
I was trying to think of an analogy - I couldn't come up with a great one, but as a quick one: which is "hotter", two atoms at a million degrees, or 10 tons of coal burning at 500 degrees. I don't have an answer, because it is not really a meaningful question. And that's my point - temperature is not really a very meaningful way to describe these events.