The Large Hadron Collider, considered the largest particle accelerator on Earth, was restarted this Friday (22), at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), near Geneva, Switzerland.
The equipment was shut down for three years for maintenance and upgrades and has been reactivated to start what scientists are calling Run 3, the LHC’s third science run, which will run experiments until 2024. Run 1s ran from 2009 to 2013 and the second race from 2015 to 2018.
The plan is to shut down the particle accelerator in 2024 for further updates, and reactivate it in 2028 as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider.
“The machines and facilities underwent major upgrades during the second long shutdown of the CERN accelerator complex. The LHC itself has undergone an extensive consolidation program and will now operate at even higher power and, thanks to major improvements to the injector complex, will provide significantly more data for the upgraded LHC experiments. day,” said CERN Director of Accelerators and Technology Mike. Lamont, in a statement Friday (22).
“The LHC itself has undergone an extensive consolidation program and will now operate at even higher power and, thanks to major improvements to the injector complex, will provide much more data for the LHC experiments up to date. »
27 kilometers of the LHC were pulled to inject two beams of protons in opposite directions at an energy level of 450 billion electron-volts. The goal, according to the scientists, is to reach 13.6 trillion electron-volts in this third run.
“These beams were flowing through the energy injection and contained a relatively small number of protons. High-intensity, high-energy collisions are months away. They represent the successful restart of the accelerator after all the hard work of the long shutdown,” explained Rhodri Jones, Head of CERN’s Beams Department.
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