Question: In what form is energy released in colliders by smashing atoms? Can this huge amount of energy be used to make the next collision or can it be harnessed to create electricity?

David Freeborn answered on 18 Jun 2013:

Hi rajathjackson,

This is a really interesting question. The energy created comes out in two forms: (1) the kinetic energy of more tiny particles and (2) the “mass” of these particles (because E=mc^2, so mass can be thought of as a way to store energy)

These particles are normally very unstable and decay into even smaller ones (a typical particle might decay in 0.000000000000000000000000001 seconds), and these also usually decay. In the end, almost all of the energy is in just a few types of particle:

electrons (and their anti-particle, positrons)
neutrinos (tiny, almost undetectable particles. Several billion pass through your body every second)
photons (these are tiny particles of light rays)

In principle, yes we could harness this energy- it would be similar to the way we harness nuclear energy right now, but many, many times more difficult to do. But it would also give us even more energy than nuclear power does.
Maybe in the distant future, we could harness it, and do so cleanly, but that would be many decades or even centuries away. It would be extremely difficult to do.