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The large hadron Collider, the world's biggest atom smasher, in the CERN's tunnel, 100 metres below ground in a complex straddling the French-Swiss border. A file photograph. AN electron volt is the energy gained by an electron when accelerated across one volt of electric potential. This is very small compared to everyday energy scale, say that of a 1 kg object falling from a height of 1 metre, which is measured in Joules (1 eV = 1.602 x 10-19 Joules). In fact, 1 trillion electronic volt (TeV) is about the energy of a flying mosquito. It is the fact that this energy is squeezed into a space that is a trillion times smaller than a mosquito that makes the LHC an extraordinary machine. Given the huge number of protons in the beam, the total energy in a beam would, in fact, be equivalent to a 400 tonne train travelling at a speed of 150 km an hour, which is enough to melt 500 kg of copper.
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