CERN's souped-up Large Hadron Collider to launch again after Higgs boson hiatus

[Lodestar]

Nearly two years after CERN shut its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) down for repairs, scientists are once again gearing up to smash particles inside the chilly 27km ring - only this time with enough energy to blitz one tonne of copper.

The LHC's three-year "season two", as CERN calls it, will begin later this month with super-charged equipment and injectors capable of producing 13 tera-electron-volt (TeV) energy collisions, nearly double the 8 TeV that was possible in 2012 when CERN researchers discovered the Higgs boson quantum particle.

While the LHC has produced one Higgs boson particle, the researchers are hoping the more powerful LHC, which is capable of producing one billion collisions per second, will increase the chances of creating Higgs bosons during collisions and thus provide more opportunities to compare experiments with the Standard Model of particle physics. After all, there could be an entire family of Higgs boson particles that weren't discoverable with the less powerful collider.

And, if nature is kind, the collisions may also present a chance to look at dark matter. However, at a press launch for the refitted LHC, CERN scientists warned it could take two decades to find dark matter.

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http://www.zdnet.com/article/cerns-souped-up-large-hadron-collider-to-launch-again-after-higgs-boson-hiatus/?tag=nl.e232&s_cid=e232&ttag=e232&ftag=TRE6a12a91

[Romeo.lima333]

1. cool stuff thanks lodestar