THE large hadron collider is getting turned back on — and this time it’s going to be twice as powerful.

The ginormous circular machine with a tunnel circumference of 27km has sat dormant for the past two years while technicians and scientists worked to make alterations to the system. The upgrades will allow the LHC to propel particles at double the speed of previous experiments and could pave the way for some truly groundbreaking discoveries.

As scientists prepare for the machine to be switched back on, speculation is fierce about the potential outcomes of the impending particle accelerations. Some in the scientific community are claiming it could lead to proof of parallel universes.

The LHC was due to be turned on this week but the detection of a short circuit in one of its powerful electromagnets has led to a temporary delay. However when scientists at CERN do get it running, one thing they will be looking for is the creation of tiny black holes.

Apparently, the (hypothetical) detection of mini black holes would lend support to string theory which postulates the existence of alternative dimensions and parallel universes.

That is the theory posed by physicists Mir Faizal, Mohammed M. Khalil and Ahmed Farag Ali which is published in the current issue of the journal Physics Letters B.

Black holes were not detected in the previous experiments conducted by the LHC but the authors of the study believe the increased power could do the trick.

“We found that the energy needed to form black holes is larger than the energy scale of the LHC, but is within reach of the next particle colliders,” the authors wrote in the paper.

They believe that in previous experiments, scientists did not observe black holes because they did not take into account the idea of rainbow gravity.

According to the rainbow gravity theory, if other dimensions exist, it is possible that gravity could “leak” into alternative dimensions and lower the energy required to produce a mini black hole.

Mr. Faizal, told CDC News that such an event was conceivably possible with the increased power and would prove “extra dimensions and parallel universes are correct.”

It is purely speculative and while numerous media outlets have run wild with the idea, with the UK’s Telegraph even saying such findings would disprove the theory of the big bang, others are not convinced.

Swedish physicist and theoretical physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder has disputed the likelihood of black holes being created and said the paper has major theoretical flaws in it.

In a fiery blog post, she questioned their methods and refuted a number of their conclusions. “None of this has anything to do with parallel universes,” she wrote.

Parallel universes aside, the new round of experiments will most likely allow scientists to discover new, and possibly bigger, particles that would enhance our understanding of physics.

LHC researcher Patrick Koppenburg said they are hoping to find “particles that are so heavy that they haven’t been produced before.”

For example, it has been speculated that the Higgs Boson is one of several undiscovered particles that make up a broader Higgs family.

The LHC’s biggest achievement so far was the July 2012 discovery of the Higgs Boson particle and the new round of activity will give researchers a greater insight into its behaviour.

Thought to have existed since the 1960s, the particle is a part of the Higgs field that governs laws around the mass of particles. The official identification of the particle was hailed as a major scientific breakthrough.

Time will tell if this second round of experiments will prove to be as fruitful. While we may or may not prove the existence of parallel universes, stay tuned for some potentially ground breaking discoveries.