# Could the Large Hadron Collider accelerate one kilogram of protons at once?

Is it possible to accelerate a very large number of protons in a particle accelerator as opposed to only a few as is regularly done? What's to keep someone from accidentally dumping too many particles into an accelerator and destroy the facility with its kinetic energy and enormous thrust?

• It's not possible. The space charge would blow such a large cloud of protons apart. It is, indeed, fairly hard to accelerate beams with more than a few amperes of beam current efficiently because the space charges make focusing difficult. – CuriousOne Dec 23 '15 at 1:51
• Lhc uses a lot of fuses :) the protons come from a devices chain , each one with its own limits , that can't deliver too much material. To get the targeted collisions ratio, all is fine tuned – user46925 Dec 23 '15 at 1:59
• interesting to compute the kynetic energy needed to accelerate 1kg until 99.99% of c . Note that the time at this speed is very short at the collision node – user46925 Dec 23 '15 at 2:05
• a summary of the process : How the Large Hadron Collider Works – user46925 Dec 23 '15 at 4:32
• You could rule it out just by considering the energy required to accelerate 1kg to 0.9c – user235504 Dec 23 '15 at 10:48