Large Hadron Collider Restarts After Three-year Break

The Large Hadron Collider restarted Friday after a three-year break for upgrades that will allow it to smash protons together at even greater speeds, in the hope of making new ground-breaking discoveries

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Apr, 2022 ) :The Large Hadron Collider restarted Friday after a three-year break for upgrades that will allow it to smash protons together at even greater speeds, in the hope of making new ground-breaking discoveries.

It will further study the Higgs boson, the existence of which it proved in 2012, and put the Standard Model of particle physics to the test after recent anomalies sparked theories about a mysterious fifth force of nature.

"Two beams of protons circulated in opposite directions around the Large Hadron Collider's 27-kilometre (17-mile) ring" just after noon on Friday, Europe's physics lab CERN said in a statement.

Buried more than 100 metres (330 feet) beneath the border of Switzerland and France, the collider has been closed since December 2018 for maintenance and upgrades, the second longest shutdown in its 14-year history.

To start with, the collider is taking it easy.

A "relatively small number of protons" were circulated at an energy of 450 billion electronvolts, CERN said.

"High-intensity, high-energy collisions are a couple of months away," the head of CERN's beams department Rhodri Jones said.

CERN said its experts "will work around the clock" to get the collider ready to set a new record of 13.6 trillion electronvolts.