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CERN's collider sets proton speed record

The recently restarted Large Hadron Collider has become the world's most powerful particle accelerator, after setting a new record for beam intensity.

Tom Espiner Special to CNET News
Screens show the LHC circulating two beams simultaneously for the first time on November 23. CERN

The recently restarted Large Hadron Collider has become the world's most powerful particle accelerator, after setting a new record for beam intensity.

Scientists working at the particle collider successfully accelerated a beam of protons up to 1.18 tera-electron-volts (TeV) late on Sunday night, beating the previous record of 0.98 TeV, CERN has announced. In the early hours of Monday morning, both the clockwise and the anticlockwise beams were accelerated to 1.18 TeV, giving the protons a speed of approximately 0.9997 times the speed of light.

The previous record for beam intensity was 0.98 TeV, held by the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago since 2001...

Read more of "LHC sets world record for particle acceleration" at ZDNet UK.