Layer 1: The Beam Pipe
The beam pipe is the innermost layer of CDF. The beam pipe is where the protons and anti-protons, traveling at approximately .99996c, collide head on. Each of the protons is moving extremely close to the speed of light with extremely high energies. Therefore, in a collision, much of the energy is converted into mass. This allows proton- anti-proton annihilation to produce daughter particles, such as top quarks with a mass of 175 GeV, much heavier than the original protons.
Read more about this topic: Collider Detector At Fermilab
Famous quotes containing the words layer, beam and/or pipe:
“After a few months’ acquaintance with European “coffee,” one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 7:3.
From the Sermon on the Mount.
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—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)