Physicists the world over were filled with invigoration as the Large Hadron Collider was being restarted on Sunday after a 2-year-long hiatus. Beams of protons began smoothly circulating in both directions through the machine.

“It’s fantastic to see it going so well after two years and such a major overhaul of the LHC,” Rolf Heuer, Europe CERN particle physics center director general said in a Sunday statement.

The two-year shutdown was caused by a major refit that almost doubled the collider’s power. As a result of this refit, the LHC is now able to smash particles together at nigh-light-speed so that physicists will be better capable of reaching into the unknown.

New modifications of the Hadron Collider include safer magnets and Quench protection, so that energy resulted in the collider’s activity can be dissipated in a controlled way. Yet of all modifications, the increased energy of proton beams inside the collider is certainly the most anticipated. These beams can now travel at 13 Trillion electron Volts as opposed to the 8 TeV’s the collider had been capable of before.

New technology also allows proton packet lag to be decreased from 50 nanoseconds to 25 nanoseconds so that the rate of collisions is efficiently increased. The ring of powerful magnets is being cooled down to absolute zero while their interconnections between them are now fully upgraded. Radiation resistant electronics are also being used while the interiors of the LHC’s vacuum tube are now covered with non-evaporating getter so that electron cloud buildups are no longer possible. Consequently, more energetic collisions will become a reality and physicists can look forward to increased odds of discovering new particles.

“The basic thing we’re looking for is to start producing some new heavy particles that we couldn’t produce last time,” Joe Lykken, Fermilab theoretical physicist explains, noting that cosmic rays found in outer space exceed the 13 TeV power that the LHC is currently capable of.

Several tasks are still on the agenda of engineers and physicists at the LHC before massive collisions will be able to be studied.

With these new improvements, the LHC may help scientists conquer new frontiers by observing super -symmetry, extra dimensions or even find evidence of dark matter. And while the collider is just getting started, additional upgrades are planned to further boost the machine’s capacity between now and 2035 (its scheduled retirement).

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