For several years now, researchers have carefully sifted through data collected from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN's Large Hadron Collider in its first run at smashing particles together. But when productivity hit a peak, and researchers ran out of things to study from the vast data collected only a few years ago, CERN looked towards a round two that would provide additional insights that may help answer questions that modern physics has, in addition to sparking new topics which CERN researchers could study.
Months now after renovations began, CERN announced that the Large Hadron Collider is on the cusp of restarting for its second 3-year mission which will provide largely greater significant data on account of a doubling in the collision energy involved in the reactions observed. But that's not the only kicker for the Large Hadron Collider's second round at the superconducting experiment. CERN researchers confirm that significant upgrades have been implemented to better drive the efficacy of the experiment, as well as keep the world's largest, and most complex, particle accelerator safe & stable during operation.
After the 2 year long hiatus in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider's base just below Geneva, Switzerland, the accelerator is expected to begin the power-up process this upcoming March, and while the accelerator may take months to power up the components of the complex chain of superconductors and massive detectors, the new era of ultra-high energy particle collisions are expected to begin as soon as May. And the new goals for 2015 is to push the proton-proton collision energies up to nearly twice what they originally were in the first run-with a level exceeding 13 TeV.
"With this new energy level, the LHC will open new horizons for physics and for future discoveries" CERN Director-General, Rolf Heuer says. "I'm looking forward to seeing what nature has in store for us."
And now, fully equipped with new state-of-the-art equipment custom-built for the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider can see a myriad of new experimentation techniques. In particular, researchers from CERN announced on Friday that the Large Hadron Collider's main 17 mile long ring of superconductors can be cooled close to 1.9 degrees Kelvin-only a fraction above absolute zero. With this, in addition to the many renovations made to the underground plant, CERN will be able to better answer its original set of questions left unanswered from the first experiment, and will finally be able to responsibly expand on their research, only months after collisions ended for the first time.
"After the huge amount of work done over the last two years, the LHC is almost like a new machine" CERN's Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry. "Restarting this extraordinary accelerator is far from routine, though nevertheless, I'm confident that we will beon schedule to provide collisions to the LHC experiments by May 2015.
