An unprecedented number of particles has been reached in record time. Just five weeks after physics resumed, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is already running at full throttle. On Wednesday 28 June 2017 the LHC established yet another record-breaking high, with 2556 proton bunches circulating in each direction of the accelerator. The beams in the LHC are made up of bunches of protons, spaced seven metres (25 nanoseconds) apart, with each one containing more than 100

billion protons. 2556 is the maximum possible number of bunches that can be reached with the beam preparation method currently used.  The particle bunches that are delivered to the LHC are prepared and accelerated by a chain of four accelerators. Since last year, a new method to group and split the bunches enables the particles to be squeezed even closer together. With an equal  of protons, the beam diameter was reduced by 40 per cent. Denser bunches means a higher probability of collisions at the centre of the experiments. READ MORE


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