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mk  ·  4779 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Oh-My-God Particle.
The energy of this particle is some 40 million times that of the highest energy protons that can currently be produced in any terrestrial particle accelerator.

OMG indeed. I don't completely understand this, however:

However only a small fraction of this energy would be available for an interaction with a proton or neutron on Earth, with most of the energy remaining in the form of kinetic energy of the products of the interaction[citation needed].

I mean, what is the alternative that is being assumed? It smashes the proton or neutron to bits. What I want to know, is if those bits could in turn smash other neutrons and protons apart, and so on. What if it his a proton in my nose?