Higgs Boson halts as CERN closes for two-year break
Months after the landmark discovery of a potential Higgs Boson particle, CERN scientists today shut down its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for two years to revamp the machine for advanced experiments.
The Europe's top physics lab decided to take the break from smashing invisible particles, with an aim to restart with a renewed vigour.
The LHC has provided physicists with a huge quantity of data to analyse since the first physics run in 2009.
"We have every reason to be very satisfied with the LHC's first three years," CERN's director general, Rolf Heuer, said in a statement.
"The machine, the experiments, the computing facilities and all infrastructures behaved brilliantly, and we have a major scientific discovery in our pocket."
Although there will be no collisions for a period of almost two years, the whole CERN site will be a hive of activity, with large-scale work under way to modernise the infrastructure and prepare the LHC for operation at higher energy.
"A whole series of renovation work will be carried out around the LHC during LS1," says Simon Baird, deputy head of the Engineering department.
"The key driver is of course the consolidation of the 10,170 high-current splices between the superconducting magnets.
"The teams will start by opening up the 1695 interconnections between each of the cryostats of the main magnets. They will repair and consolidate around 500 interconnections simultaneously. The maintenance work will gradually cover the entire 27-kilometre circumference of the LHC," Baird said in a statement.
The LHC will be upgraded as well as renovated during the period
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