‘Big Bang’ particle collider restarts after refit
Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have restarted their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) “Big Bang” machine after a two-year refit, launching a new bid to resolve some of the mysteries of the universe.
In a live blogExternal link covering the restart, CERN said on Sunday that one of the two beams had completed the 27km circuit of the LHC, beneath the Swiss-French border near Geneva.
The LHC had been shut down for two years for a refit of its machinery and wiring. CERN spent about $150 million (CHF144 million) on the upgrade, opening the massive machine every 20 metres, checking magnets and improving connections.
Any new discoveries it makes are unlikely to emerge until mid-2016. Scientists are promising nearly twice the energy and more violent particle crashes this time around. They hope the more powerful beam crashes – expected to start as early as June – will give them a peek into the unseen dark universe.
The collider was instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that had long been theorised but never confirmed until 2013.
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