The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is capable of accelerating a proton to almost the speed of light. An M&M travelling at this speed would be devastating. If it hit a solid object, it would release the equivalent of about 80 times the energy from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Fortunately, this wouldn’t happen, because the LHC can only accelerate subatomic particles and nuclei. An M&M is almost 500 trillion, trillion times heavier and even if you could ionise its surface evenly so that it could be accelerated by the collider’s electromagnetic fields, the top speed it could reach would be about 6cm (approx 2in) per hour.
Read more:
- Has there ever been a Small Hadron Collider?
- Could we ever study particle physics in a more elegant fashion than just smashing atoms?
- How many elementary particles are thought to exist?
- Extreme experiments: The laboratories that are pushing science to its limits
Asked by: Ria Fisher, Via email
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