"The large-scale homogeneity of the universe makes it very difficult to believe that the structure of the universe is determined by anything so peripheral as some complicated molecular structure on a minor planet orbiting a very average star in the outer suburbs of a fairly typical galaxy."

— Steven Hawking

Supercharged Large Hadron Collider Tackles Universe's Big Questions

By kuky at Fri, 06/05/2015 - 7:12am

Ramped up in power after a two-year upgrade, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator is once again doing science. Following its official restart on June 3, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, can smash protons together faster and with higher energies than during its first run, which ended in February 2013. Our graphical guide illuminates the discoveries that could lie ahead in the next run of the LHC.

 

The first run began in earnest in November 2009. The LHC collided particles—mainly protons, but also heavier particles such as lead ions—at high enough energies to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson in 2012, which garnered a Nobel prize for the physicists who had predicted the subatomic particle.