It’s time for celebration after a three-month break for maintenance. The largest particle accelerator in the world is back in business.
This time around, scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva, hope that more power in the Large Hadron Collider will open the path for new discoveries in fundamental physics. The revamped LHC allows them to test previously untestable theories and search for more new particles.
“We really had to reboot the whole machine in 2015 and that was a lot of hard work to do all that. This year, after a thirteen-week stop, we expect things to be a lot easier and they have proven to be a lot easier. The powering tests have gone well, machine check out has gone well,” says LHC machine coordinator, Mike Lamont.
By sending bunches around the ring, the LHC is able to generate collisions, from which scientists study the basics constituents of matter, the so-called fundamental particles, to try and provide answers to elusive concepts.
