To keep it on the same circular path as it gains energy, we must make the magnetic field slightly stronger each time it goes around. We synchronize the increase in the magnetic field with the proton's increasing energy. To keep our proton and billions of others like it circling together, we focus them into a tight beam. We have made a circular accelerator of the type called a synchrotron, of which Fermilab's Tevatron is the world's most powerful. Add 10 billion antiprotons While the protons are speeding around the accelerator ring, we feed a batch of antiprotons into the same ring.
Antiprotons are particles just like protons, but with a negative charge.
Their opposite charge makes them accelerate like the protons, through the same gaps but in the opposite direction. Their opposite charge also allows them to be bent in the same circle by the magnets, but traveling the opposite way around. We have now produced two intense beams of particles orbiting the accelerator ring in opposite directions at close to the speed of light. When we decide to bring the beams together at a point in the accelerator ring, we will cause millions of high-energy collisions yielding hundreds of different kinds of particles, one of them, perhaps, a top quark.