The Large Hadron Collider Is Back At It Again!

Above: A section of the LHC interior

The Large Hadron Collider is beginning its third operational run, after a maintenance period of four years. The Switzerland-based facility is the largest particle collider in the world and the site where the Higgs Boson particle was first observed in 2012. The LHC is operated by CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, an association of European states that runs a handful of particle accelerators across the continent, with the Large Hadron Collider at the center. The full length of the collider is massive, running about 17 miles in circumference.

The last four years has seen various upgrades implemented into the facility, mainly to outfit the collider with higher-intensity beams and a new data collection system. These upgrades will aid in investigating the universe’s matter-antimatter asymmetry, as well as dark matter properties. All this will take place during the collider’s third operational run, which is expected to last the next four years.

Will running the collider open a wormhole in our reality? Probably not, since we've been just fine the last two times. It has, however, been an incredible resource in understanding the building blocks of physics! Who knows what exciting advances in our understanding of the fabric of the universe we’ll discover in that time?