It started again the largest particle accelerator – Vanguardia Liberal

The largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world again start last Sunday, after a two year hiatus, announced CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

This new launch of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, for its acronym in English), located on the French-Swiss border, which includes a ring-shaped tunnel 27 kilometers, will allow to carry out a second phase of exploration of uncharted territories of physics.

The heart is beating again

The particle accelerator located about 100 meters underground, had to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, whereby two CERN scientists won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2012.

This element, which helped explain how objects have mass, is considered as a key component of the fundamental structure of matter, known as the “God particle”.

This Sunday at 10h41, a proton beam turned the ring 27 km diameter of the LHC in a sense, then, at 12h27, a second ran the same course in reverse, CERN said in a statement.

“Today, CERN heart is beating again the rhythm of the LHC “, welcomed Rolf Heuer, its CEO, said in a statement.

In the coming days, operators will check all systems before increasing the beam energy, the enter the LHC in its second exploration campaign.

During the two years of work stoppage, hundreds of engineers and technicians worked to repair and strengthen the particle accelerator to make it operate with greater energy, and and allow physicists to expand their research field and confirming or invalidating some theories.

unexpected discoveries

This power increase will allow experimenting worthy science fiction.

“The LHC is in great shape,” said Frédérick Bordry, director of accelerators and technology. “But the most important step is before us, when we bring the power of the beams to record levels,” he added.

Once you have calibrated the powerful device, the beams will be focused by magnets at low temperatures allowing the collision of protons.

Some speculate that the experiences allow make unexpected discoveries.

Researchers now explore, among other things, the enigmatic dark matter and the quark-gluon plasma.

The dark, invisible matter makes up most of the universe, but can only be detected by its gravitational effects, CERN explains on its website.