When Particles Collide

LHC makes third run after three years of intensive maintenance

A big time win for champions of maintenance and repair here.

The Large Hadron Collider (shown above) housed at the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research, translated from the French acronym) complex in Geneva, Switzerland and capable of accelerating particles at the highest force known to man, is back up and running this week after three years off.

We have maintenance technicians to thank for bringing us this science, according to CERN:

"After over three years of upgrade and maintenance work, the LHC is now set to run for close to four years at the record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (TeV), providing greater precision and discovery potential. Increased collision rates, higher collision energy, upgraded data readout and selection systems, new detector systems and computing infrastructure: all these factors point to a promising physics season that will further expand the already very diverse LHC physics program!"

It's already been a success, discovering three new particles and bewildering even the greatest of wordsmiths:

The international LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed three never-before-seen particles: a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks”