I thought LHC was something RC dreams about.
Anyway, goodluck to those crazy people at CERN. And what on earth is 'one inverse femtobarn of data '?
According to wiki it's 'a measurement of particle collision events per femtobarn' where a femtobarn is 10−43 M^2 so are they looking for a single collision over the 2 years or are they looking at a larger area and expecting multiple collisions?
From the same Wiki article:
The "inverse femtobarn" (fb−1) is a measurement of particle collision events per femtobarn. Over a period of time, two streams of particles with a cross-sectional area, measured in femtobarns, are directed to collide. The total number of collisions is directly proportional to the luminosity of the collisions measured over this time. Therefore, the collision count can be calculated by multiplying the integrated luminosity by the sum of the cross-section for those collision processes. This count is then expressed as inverse femtobarns for the time period (e.g., 100 fb−1 in 9 months). Inverse femtobarns are often quoted as an indication of particle collider effectiveness.
1 fb-1 is 1000 times as many collisions as 1 pb-1 [picobarn].
It took Fermilab over a decade to achieve 1 fb-1.
