LHC smashes protons together once again
2 Apr 2015 by Evoluted New Media
After a delay, the second run of the Large Hadron Collider – the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator – is due to start over this holiday weekend.
Following a two year upgrade, the particle collider operates at higher energies of 13 TeV (teraelectron volt = 1.6 x 10-7 joules) compared to 8 TeV in 2012. These higher energies will allow physicists to extend their searches for new particles and to check previously untestable theories.
To improve the data storage needed for the second run, the scientists installed almost 60,000 new cores and over 100 petabytes (1,000 terabytes) of additional disk storage. Also, significant upgrades have been made to the networking infrastructure including new uninterruptible power supplies that can provide emergency power.
The collider allows scientists to reproduce the conditions that existed within a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.
The Large Hadron Collider – run by CERN – uses two high-energy beams that travel almost at the speed of light before programmed to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes guided around the 27 km accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field. Just before the collision another magnet is used to squash the particles closer together to increase the chances of collisions.
The start of the particle accelerator was delayed due to a short circuit detected in one of machine’s magnet circuits, however scientists believe the LHC is ready for a restart.
“We are confident of being able to restart the machine over the weekend, as all of the tests performed so far have been successful,” said Frédérick Bordry, Director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN.
