The Large Hadron Collider returns, twice as powerful as before
| Berlin
Scientists聽successfully聽restarted聽experiments聽at the聽world's聽biggest聽particle聽collider聽Wednesday, after a two-year shutdown and upgrade that allows it to smash together atoms with almost double the energy used in its first run.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said the Large Hadron聽Collider聽will now run around the clock for the next three years, producing vast amounts of data for聽scientists聽to scour.
"We have seen the first data beginning to flow," said CERN's director, Rolf Heuer. "Let's see what they will reveal to us about how our universe works."
The聽collider聽underwent a $150 million upgrade after its first run, which produced results that helped confirm the existence of an elusive subatomic聽particle, the Higgs boson.
Heuer said physicists hope the new run might lead to discoveries that could help "explain remaining mysteries such as dark matter."
The LHC, located in a 27-kilometer (16.8-mile) tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, is now smashing together protons at 13 trillion electronvolts.
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