Key Takeaways
CERN powered down the Large Hadron Collider on June 29 and entered Long Shutdown 3 to begin a major upgrade.
The successor machine, the High-Luminosity LHC, is designed for up to 10 times the collision rate and is set to start in 2030.
Researchers expect data on roughly 380 million Higgs bosons, a haul that could test the standard model and probe dark matter.
Physicists have powered down the Large Hadron Collider, the machine that found the Higgs boson, and begun a years-long rebuild that will turn it into a far more powerful successor.
The collider at CERN, the European physics lab near Geneva, stopped smashing protons on June 29 and entered what the lab calls Long Shutdown 3. In its place, engineers will build the High-Luminosity LHC, scheduled to switch on in 2030. Since 2010 the LHC has accelerated protons around a 27-kilometer underground ring that straddles France and Switzerland, and its signature achievement came in 2012, when the ATLAS and CMS experiments used it to confirm the Higgs boson, the particle tied to the origin of mass.
What the upgrade changes
The new machine is built for volume. The High-Luminosity LHC is designed to deliver up to 10 times the luminosity of the current collider, a measure of how tightly packed the protons are in each beam, which translates into far more collisions to study. Getting there is not a quick tune-up. Crews will remove and replace about 1.2 kilometers of accelerator components, and the giant detectors that record the collisions will get major overhauls of their own.
The payoff is data. Researchers expect the upgraded collider to record roughly 380 million Higgs bosons, enough to hunt for cracks in the standard model, the long-standing theory of particle physics. That haul could also bear on some of the biggest open questions in science, including the nature of dark matter and why the universe holds so much matter but almost no antimatter. It is the kind of patient, decade-scale science that rarely trends, and it sits in the same frontier-research file WYDE has followed through Aleph's ultrasound of a living brain and Tessel Bio's generative chemistry model. Worth watching.
People Also Ask
Why did CERN shut down the Large Hadron Collider?
To rebuild it. The LHC stopped on June 29 and entered Long Shutdown 3 so crews can install the High-Luminosity LHC, a more powerful version set to start in 2030.
What is the High-Luminosity LHC?
It is the collider's next-generation upgrade, designed to deliver up to 10 times the luminosity of the current machine, meaning far more proton collisions to analyze.
When will the collider run again?
The High-Luminosity LHC is scheduled to switch on in 2030, after about 1.2 kilometers of components are replaced and the detectors are overhauled.
What could the upgrade discover?
Researchers expect data on about 380 million Higgs bosons, which could reveal cracks in the standard model and shed light on dark matter and the matter-antimatter imbalance.