The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world-famous particle accelerator that was used to detect the Higgs boson particle in 2012, has been restarted after a three-year hiatus for maintenance and upgrades. The accelerator can now resume work to reveal more about the constituent particles of the universe.
The LHC tunnel at point 1. CERN
The LHC is housed in a 17-mile tunnel under the French-Swiss border and was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). On Friday, April 22, he fired two proton beams at each other with an energy of 450 billion electron volts (450 GeV).
“These rays circulated at injection energy and contained a relatively small number of protons,” said Rodri Jones, head of CERN’s radiation department, in a statement. “High-intensity, high-energy collisions are coming in a few months. But the first rays represent the successful restart of the accelerator after all the hard work of the long shutdown. “
The three-year maintenance period, called Long Shutdown or LS2, began in December 2018 and included improvements to accelerators, which should allow even higher energy beams to be produced, up to 6.8 TeV per beam. The magnets that direct and focus the particle rays are also equipped with an improved electrical insulation system, and some of the magnets have been replaced.
In general, improvements to the LHC will allow the particle accelerator to operate at higher energies, as well as to perform more frequent collisions. Researchers working with the accelerator hope that this will allow them to learn more about the Higgs boson particle and further test the Standard Model of Physics, which describes three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces.
“Machinery and equipment underwent significant improvements during the second long-term shutdown of CERN’s accelerator complex,” said Mike Lamont, CERN’s Director of Accelerators and Technology. “The LHC itself has undergone an extensive consolidation program and will now operate with even higher energy, and thanks to major improvements in the injection complex, it will provide significantly more data on modernized LHC experiments.”
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