Posted on 04/05/2015 6:42:01 AM PDT by John W
The Large Hadron Collider has restarted, with protons circling the machine's 27km tunnel for the first time since 2013.
Particle beams have now travelled in both directions, inside parallel pipes, at a whisker below the speed of light.
Actual collisions will not begin for at least another month, but they will take place with nearly double the energy the LHC reached during its first run.
Scientists hope to glimpse a "new physics" beyond the Standard Model.
Rolf Heuer, the director-general of Cern, which operates the LHC, told engineers and scientists at the lab: "Congratulations. Thank you very much everyone… now the hard work starts".
Cern's director for accelerators and technology, Frédérick Bordry, said: "After two years of effort, the LHC is in great shape.
"But the most important step is still to come when we increase the energy of the beams to new record levels."
The beams have arrived a week or so later than originally scheduled, due to a now-resolved electrical fault.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Glad this thing is over in Europe.
Never know what could happen if things go wrong.
The universe ended and I missed it?
Darn - why am I always the last one to know about these things...
Oh, does that mean we get another month before our playing around with forces we don't understand causes the total annihilation of the earth? Better get my affairs in order, then!
(Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)
It's going to rip a hole in the space-time continuum, so it probably already happened yesterday.
At least it will give them some real manmade climate change to worry about
All that they need to do is to sign a framework for an agreement with any micro black holes that may be created, so that we can declare a great and historic diplomatic victory and be certain that nothing bad will come of it.
What could go wrong, after all...
...or maybe back in 2008.
Dr. Sheldon Cooper is pleased.
It would be funny if we discovered that every supernova we see was actually caused by some alien civilization cracking open a fundamental particle in their version of a collider.
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