Even at school, they teach that light is the fastest in nature and is able to cover huge distances in a few seconds. But which object is considered the fastest after the light?
Speed of light
Despite the fact that light is considered an intangible object, it consists entirely of real particles - photons that have zero mass at rest. Being in a vacuum, they move in space at a speed of 299 792 458 m / s, which is currently considered the fastest indicator of speed.
Interesting fact: distance from the Earth to the Sun, with a length of 150 million kilometers, light passes in 8 minutes 19 seconds.
The speed of light is actively used by people in everyday life, starting from the banal heating by the sun's rays and ending with the transmission of signals and information.
The fastest object after the light
Given the high speed of light, it may seem that in the universe there are no things that can move at least half slower. This was thought for a long time, until October 15, 1991, American scientists made an amazing discovery.
In the Earth’s atmosphere, protons with a huge momentum were detected using a special Fly’s Eye detector. Despite their microscopic size, the particles possessed the energy of a tennis ball flying at a speed of 150 km / h. This allowed them to accelerate to a speed that almost completely coincides with the light. They were called OMG-particle (protons “Oh my God”).
Scientists have been able to establish that over 215,000 years OMG travels a distance that is only a centimeter shorter than the path that light travels, and its speed is 99.9999999999999999999999951% of the light. Thus, “Oh my God” are considered the second fastest objects in the universe. To date, about a hundred such particles have been registered.
Scientists began to compare the properties of OMG with the behavior of particles dispersed in a hadron collider. It turned out that during the interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere, the protons spent a large amount of kinetic energy, and the value of the latter turned out to be 50 times larger than the similar released during the collision of particles in the accelerator.
Particle velocity in the Hadron Collider
After the large electron-positron collider stopped its work in 2000, it was decided to build an improved model. Back in the second half of the 80s, scientists created various developments and drawings, which began to be implemented in the 2001th year.
Interesting fact: About 10 thousand scientists from 100 countries participated in the development and construction, and most of them are still working on a collider.
The Hadron Collider was launched in 2008, but after a couple of weeks one of its contacts melted and caused an accident. Because of this, the work had to be stopped until mid-2009. Having put the installation in order, workers and scientists resumed experiments. Their main activity was the collision of various particles at high speeds and the study of the resulting products during the reaction.
One of the most significant discoveries made with the help of the installation is the discovery of an elementary particle - the Higgs boson, the existence of which the scientist predicted back in 1964.
And if in the first time after the accident, scientists did not dare to use the full power of the collider, then gradually they began to disperse particles faster. The design of the device is a closed tunnel, the circumference of which is 26,659 m. The particle moves in a circle at a certain speed, and the maximum value of this value was obtained when protons with an energy of 7 TeV were launched: their speed is only 3 m / s slower than light. This means that in a second the particle makes a full circle about 10 thousand times. In theory, such protons can be considered the third fastest objects in the universe.
The fastest object after light is the OMG proton, which moves at about the same speed. Over 215,000 years, OMG travels only 1 cm less than a particle of light.
