Once More Unto the Breach

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After two years spent undergoing repairs and upgrades and a few eleventh-hour adjustments, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator is back in action. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland, came back online Sunday, April 5, and will be commissioned over coming weeks to be ready by June, if not sooner, to smash particles and to provide scientists from all over the world with data to help them uncover the deepest secrets of the universe.

"We are on the threshold of an exciting time in particle physics," said Fleming Crim, National Science Foundation assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences. "The LHC will turn on with the highest energy ever achieved; this energy regime will open the door to new discoveries about our universe that were impossible as recently as two years ago."  

Not that the discoveries of a few years ago aren't already impressive. In 2012, CERN scientists at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and the ATLAS detectors at the LHC reported the discovery of the highly sought Higgs boson, a subatomic particle said to be responsible for the masses of elementary particles.
 

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Large Hadron Collider

News Date: 

Wednesday, April 15, 2015