The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing to relaunch the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by March 2015. The LHC is the most powerful and largest particle accelerator in the world.
The LHC is based at a 27 kilometers (km) tunnel, which is 175 meters, or 574 feet under the Earth's surface. The LHC is located at a Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC remains the largest and the most complex experimental facility ever built by man.
The LHC went live in September 2010 and allows the scientists to recreate the environment that occurred within a billionth of a second just after the Big Bang. Scientists reproduce such conditions by colliding high-energy ions or protons beams at high speeds, very close to the speed of light.
Scientists suggests that this type of condition was present about 13.7 billion years ago when the Big Bang is believed to have happened.
The LHC operated for a few years after it was build but went for a pause for necessary maintenance and upgrade work.
Rolf Heuer CERN's Director-General suggests that the LHC will be more powerful after the upgrade. Heuer says as the energy levels have increased, the LHC will open new avenues for future discoveries and physics.
Heuer explains that on Dec. 9 this year, the magnets of LHC's one sector were successfully powered to a level that is needed for beams to reach up to 6.5 TeV. Scientists suggest that the goal for 2015 is to produce 13 TeV collisions with the help of two proton beams. This energy level has never been achieved by any accelerator in the past.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what nature has in store for us," says Heuer.
Frédérick Bordry, Director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN, claims that after the recent upgrades and maintenance, the LHC has almost become like a new machine.
"Restarting this extraordinary accelerator is far from routine. Nevertheless, I'm confident that we will be on schedule to provide collisions to the LHC experiments by May 2015," says Bordry.
It cost CERN about $5.88 billion to make LHC, which was shared by 20 member states. However, the LHC project involved more than 100 nations from around the world in building, designing, and testing the software and equipment.
