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(Image source: CERN)
BY STEVEN SPARKMAN ANCHOR JAMAL ANDRESS
The world’s largest atom smasher is smashing atoms no more. Scientists at CERN are taking
the Large Hadron Collider offline to prepare for two years of upgrades.
The LHC is the largest particle physics experiment in history, a 17-mile ring of magnets and
detectors that crashes particles into each other at nearly the speed of light.
Last summer, CERN announced they had discovered what’s generally agreed to be the Higgs
boson, the particle that give matter its mass.
But despite having made the huge discovery, the LCH has actually spent the last three
years running at half power.
That’s because of an accident in 2008, when faulty wiring lead to an explosion that damaged
many of the collider’s magnets. Because of the damage, CERN has been unable to run
the collider at full power. (Via The Guardian)
The planned upgrades will span the entire 17-mile ring, and will involve replacing and
repairing the collider’s more than 10,000 magnets, as well as new fail safes to prevent
another incident like in 2008. (Via IEEE Spectrum)
But what’s left for the LHC to discover? Back when it was being built, scientists told
the media its main purpose was to discover the Higgs, and it’s already done that. But
it turns out the Higgs was just one goal for the massive atom smasher.
Wired lays out a few others, like Supersymmetry, dark matter, new forces and just the general
unknown. “It was meant to uncover a host of new subatomic particles and exotic phenomena.”
Scientists hope that when the LHC is finally running at full power, it will do more than
just fill in the gaps in physicists’ knowledge — it’ll point out whole new gaps they
didn’t even know were there.
And it may do that even while its undergoing repairs. The LHC’s first three years, along
with other experiments, have given CERN’s data center 100 petabytes of data to analyze.
That much data would store 700 years worth of HD video.
The LHC is expected to power up again in 2015.