• Question: What speed do the particles in Cern go?

    Asked by James to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      We do not measure the velocity of particles in the accelerators as fraction of the speed of light but using their energy. So we accelerate protons in LHC up to the energy of 14 TeV. You can get the velocity using the special relativity formulas. It will be something close to 99.99% the velocity of light

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      As Michele said – we accelerate particles to as close to the speed of light as possible but the speed is not measured – instead we measure the energy

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