TeV

teraelectron volt

Energyexact by definition

The teraelectronvolt is 10¹² electronvolts, exactly 1.602176634 × 10⁻⁷ joules. The LHC collides protons at 6.8 TeV each, and the highest energy cosmic rays ever detected carry over 10⁸ TeV in a single particle, which is a macroscopic joule or so packed into one nucleus.

Watch out: A TeV is a real but tiny amount of energy, about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito. The remarkable thing about LHC beams is not the energy per particle but that there are 10¹⁴ of them, giving a stored beam energy of a few hundred megajoules.

1 TeV 1.6021766e-07 J