by Benson Agoha | Science News
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| * Candidate Higgs boson event from collisions between protons in the CMS detector on the LHC. (Credit: CERN) |
It may have been awhile since se heard about the Large Hadron Collider, whose mission is to try and uncover the secrets of the universe.
On Monday, Science News reported that scientists are back in business at the Facility in Switzerland to begin their business of crashing protons and observing as they smash together at nearly the speed of light.
They (Scientists) hope the collisions will reveal new discoveries about the universe and unearth exotic elementary particles. Effectively, the Large Hadron Collider is back in business.
"On May 9, after its regular winter hiatus, CERN’s particle accelerator outside Geneva officially began taking data from protons smashing together at nearly the speed of light," the Science News reported.
It all began in March when CERN physicists began the process of restarting the collider (LHC), the largest machine in the world which took thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians decades to plan and build. Even more, it continues to operate at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge.
But although they hit a snag on April 29 when a weasel-like animal known as a beech marten decided to get up close and personal, short-circuiting the collider and causing a brief delay, they go back to work hoping the collisions will reveal new discoveries about the universe and unearth exotic elementary particles.
In 2012, the LHC made its biggest discovery, the Higgs boson, while running at 8 trillion electron volts. Now that the LHC experiment is now colliding beams of protons at energies of 13 trillion electron volts, what will they uncover?
On Monday, Science News reported that scientists are back in business at the Facility in Switzerland to begin their business of crashing protons and observing as they smash together at nearly the speed of light.
They (Scientists) hope the collisions will reveal new discoveries about the universe and unearth exotic elementary particles. Effectively, the Large Hadron Collider is back in business.
"On May 9, after its regular winter hiatus, CERN’s particle accelerator outside Geneva officially began taking data from protons smashing together at nearly the speed of light," the Science News reported.
It all began in March when CERN physicists began the process of restarting the collider (LHC), the largest machine in the world which took thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians decades to plan and build. Even more, it continues to operate at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge.
But although they hit a snag on April 29 when a weasel-like animal known as a beech marten decided to get up close and personal, short-circuiting the collider and causing a brief delay, they go back to work hoping the collisions will reveal new discoveries about the universe and unearth exotic elementary particles.
In 2012, the LHC made its biggest discovery, the Higgs boson, while running at 8 trillion electron volts. Now that the LHC experiment is now colliding beams of protons at energies of 13 trillion electron volts, what will they uncover?
One thing is sure, "Scientists will be carefully monitoring the new data for anything unexpected" according to Science News.
The Large Hadron Collider covers a distance of 27-km tunnel, built beneath the Swiss-French border.
The Large Hadron Collider covers a distance of 27-km tunnel, built beneath the Swiss-French border.
To observe it fires two beams of hadrons around and around in a circle before colliding them into each other.
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| * The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator aiming to uncover the mysteries of the universe. (Credit: CERN) |
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| * The LHC covers 27 metres and staff need bikes to travel from one end to the other. (Credit: CERN) |
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| * The colliding point. (Credit: CERN) |
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