Just days after restarting from a winter shutdown, researchers at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), report that stable beams of protons were smashed at four observation positions, with a combined energy of 8 trillion electron volts (TeV), earning a new world record, blowing away the previous record of 7 TeV -- a record set by the LHC in 2010.
"The experience of two good years of running at 3.5 TeV per beam gave us the confidence to increase the energy for this year without any significant risk to the machine" according to Steve Myers, CERN's particle accelerator director. "Now it's over to the experiments to make the best of the increased discovery potential we're delivering them!"
Aside from setting a record for the highest energy collisions ever made by man, the LHC had some impressive early accomplishments, discovering a new kind of subatomic particle and detecting evidence of dark matter (image above is the most remote, known "dark matter" galaxy).
The accelerator's successes come thanks to its extraordinary design, with a track 17 miles long cooled to temperatures colder than outer space, and is capable of sending protons hurling at speeds in excess of 99.999999 percent the speed of light.
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