3 ms·

It’s x100 times more powerful than the collider at CERN. 14TeV vs 1.4 PeV. To put it into context, 1 TeV is the energy a mosquito uses to fly. It doesn't sound

It’s x100 times more powerful than the collider at CERN. 14TeV vs 1.4 PeV. To put it into context, 1 TeV is the energy a mosquito uses to fly. It doesn't sound like much, but for a particle as small as a photon it's a huge amount of energy.

immmmmm 5y ago
It's maybe worth mentioning that the beams at CERN are made of quite a few particles and there was as much energy in the beam as in a high speed train (and same in the magnets), before the high luminosity upgrade. The beam dumps are massive pieces of graphite and concrete with water cooling. Also at these energies the wavelength is very small so the energy can be quite concentrated in a small region of space-time.
reactspa 5y ago
Question: how come a photon can carry a variable amount of energy? (Layman here, I would have guessed that photons travel at the speed of sound, and are of fixed size and energy, like electrons.)
- coremoff 5y ago
  Photons are massless and hence always travel at the speed of light. Photons have a wavelength, and that determins their energy; photons of a same wavelength will all have the same energy; the photons discussed in this article have very short wavelength and very high energy (this energy is proportional to their frequency and inversely proprotional to their wavelength). Regarding electrons; electrons have mass, and they all have the same mass. They have energy associated with this mass, and they also have energy associated with their momentum, thus they don't all have the same energy.
  - terofle 5y ago
    > and like all Bosons are massless and hence always travel at the speed of light Not every boson is massless and not every boson is travelling at the speed of light (because there are bosons with mass). Take for example the Higgs boson or the W-bosons.
    - coremoff 5y ago
      ah, thank you; I will correct above
- ben_w 5y ago
  Photons do indeed all travel at the same speed, but are not all the same size, and what affects their energy level is their wavelength. Shorter wavelengths have more energy per photon, so e.g. a photon of blue light has about half the wavelength of a photon of red light and twice the energy. I’m curious if you really meant “speed of sound” in your question? Photons all travel at the speed of light, which is quite a lot faster than the speed of sound. But I’ve seen this several times from different places, and never found out if it’s basically just auto-complete in the speaker’s mind, or a genuine misconception.
  - reactspa 5y ago
    I meant speed of light. Yes. That was a typo / brain glitch. Thank you for your explanation, helped a lot.

immmmmm 5y ago

It's maybe worth mentioning that the beams at CERN are made of quite a few particles and there was as much energy in the beam as in a high speed train (and same in the magnets), before the high luminosity upgrade. The beam dumps are massive pieces of graphite and concrete with water cooling. Also at these energies the wavelength is very small so the energy can be quite concentrated in a small region of space-time.

reactspa 5y ago

Question: how come a photon can carry a variable amount of energy? (Layman here, I would have guessed that photons travel at the speed of sound, and are of fixed size and energy, like electrons.)

coremoff 5y ago
Photons are massless and hence always travel at the speed of light. Photons have a wavelength, and that determins their energy; photons of a same wavelength will all have the same energy; the photons discussed in this article have very short wavelength and very high energy (this energy is proportional to their frequency and inversely proprotional to their wavelength). Regarding electrons; electrons have mass, and they all have the same mass. They have energy associated with this mass, and they also have energy associated with their momentum, thus they don't all have the same energy.
- terofle 5y ago
  > and like all Bosons are massless and hence always travel at the speed of light Not every boson is massless and not every boson is travelling at the speed of light (because there are bosons with mass). Take for example the Higgs boson or the W-bosons.
  - coremoff 5y ago
    ah, thank you; I will correct above
ben_w 5y ago
Photons do indeed all travel at the same speed, but are not all the same size, and what affects their energy level is their wavelength. Shorter wavelengths have more energy per photon, so e.g. a photon of blue light has about half the wavelength of a photon of red light and twice the energy. I’m curious if you really meant “speed of sound” in your question? Photons all travel at the speed of light, which is quite a lot faster than the speed of sound. But I’ve seen this several times from different places, and never found out if it’s basically just auto-complete in the speaker’s mind, or a genuine misconception.
- reactspa 5y ago
  I meant speed of light. Yes. That was a typo / brain glitch. Thank you for your explanation, helped a lot.