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The beam path on the LHC is kept under high vacuum. At no point does it intersect air at atmospheric pressure. There's no way for anything to accidentally inter
by sbierwagen 16y ago
The beam path on the LHC is kept under high vacuum. At no point does it intersect air at atmospheric pressure. There's no way for anything to accidentally intersect the beams, which is good, since one of them is made of antimatter.
EDIT: Nope! Wrong! Mistook the LHC for the LEP. The LHC does not accelerate antimatter at any point.
Additionally, while the individual protons in the LHC may only be a hundred times more energetic, there are quite a few more total particles in the beams. I can't find any technical details of the U-70 synchrotron, but it came online in 1957, so there's that.
- fjh 16y agoSorry about the nitpick, but no, the LHC does not use antimatter. Both beams consist of protons (or heavy ions sometimes). Some of the accelerators at CERN, like the LEP (Large Electron Positron) Collider, do use antimatter, but the LHC does not.
- sbierwagen 16y agoThanks for the correction. Upvoted.