POSTED 15 DECEMBER2005
Super-speed
digital camera
takes 40 million pix a second
Item name: Regional Calorimeter Trigger
Item description: Item is a signal processing system to analyze collisions at world's largest particle accelerator.
Photo from Large
Hadron Collider
Product
features
Item takes 40 million images a second from 2-nanosecond collisions. Item receives 4 trillion bits of information per second, processes signals and delivers 14 billion bits for further analysis.
Plumbing-like object carries fast protons at Large
Hadron Collider. Nifty electric bike is not supplied with Large Hadron
Collider. Photo:
CERN
Product
background
In 2007, new Large Hadron Collider will start blasting protons (moving at 99.999999 percent of light-speed) against each other. The collider will recreate conditions just after the big bang, when mass and energy were almost infinitely compressed. As energy converts into mass, collisions will make many familiar (and therefore boring) elementary particles. To focus on new particles, calorimeter will take a 'snapshot' of collisions and help decide whether to save information on them, explains Pamela Klabbers, a high-energy physicist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on item.
Other uses
Civilian version under development for tracking traffic collisions.
Item
location
Item is part of a collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
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Sales
ranking
(Not available)
Shipment
terms
Not suitable for air shipment. Item is part of a 14,000-ton detector.
Detector is part of a collider that is 27 kilometers around and buried
50+ meters deep.
Availability
Item is back ordered. Large Hadron Collider expected to start colliding
in 2007.
Gift
wrapping
Expensive. Inquire.
Add to cart
Megan Anderson, project assistant; Terry Devitt, editor; S.V. Medaris, designer/illustrator; David Tenenbaum, feature writer; Amy Toburen, content development executive