system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In the LHC, two protons are smashed into one another to release fundamental particles. Why do they not smash two electrons or two neutrons or a proton and a neutron in hopes of finding different results or different particles?

Edit:  Thanks!  That was very educational!
gpt
There are different reasons to use different particles. The precursor to the LHC collided electrons and positrons together. Electron collisions generally give a cleaner signal than protons but it is a challenge to get them to higher energies because they lose more energy as they rotate around the ring. Neutrons are not good for colliding fast because you can't accelerate them with electric fields, but they are used in material physics, where they are scattered through solids to measure the structural and magnetic properties. There are also experiments on neutrons themselves, but they are ideally done at very low energy. Neutron facilities are typically built next to nuclear reactors.