CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Breaks Energy Record


The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland is making headlines again. Last night protons collided in the LHC at the record-breaking energy of 13 TeV for the first time. These were just...

Hadron Collider Fires Up


One of the biggest and best science experiments to take place over the last few years is happening right now, according to its home at the CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research located...

Higgs Boson Proves That The Universe Does Not Exist?


None of us should be here. In fact, the whole world, the stars and the galaxies shouldn’t be here either – according to a new cosmological study, our whole Universe should have blinked out of...

Exotic Hadron Particles Discovered


The fact has been affirmed without a shadow of doubt that hadron particles exist. And these strangely different forms of infinitely small matter do not conform to the standard manmade version of...

Primed: The smashing science behind particle accelerators

Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day -- we dig deep into each topic's history and how it benefits our lives. You can follow the series here. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.

The smashing science behind particle accelerators

Long before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could smash its first atoms, researchers manning the Tevatron collider at Fermilab, in a quiet suburb 40 miles west of Chicago, raced to find evidence that the Higgs boson exists. After roughly three decades of service, the Tevatron shut down for good in late 2011, dealing the city of Batavia's largest employer a significant blow. Less than 18 months later, the LHC (the Tevatron's technological successor) also went offline - albeit temporarily. Only four years after recording its first proton collisions, the team at CERN is already scrambling to upgrade the staggering LHC, which lies under parts of no less than five cities in both France and Switzerland. With the world's largest particle colliders smashing a whole lot of nothing together for the next two years at least, the field of high-energy physics research is starting to look resource-starved. Of course, many might ask why exactly we need giant atom smashers like this, or even how they work. It turns out that first part is quite a bit easier to answer than the second.

During the last several decades, particle accelerators have revealed the existence of elementary particles such as quarks, led to the discovery of antimatter and generally helped us unlock the mysteries of the universe. And once they were done splitting atoms and probing the darkest corners of theoretical physics, accelerators often led to breakthroughs in medical imaging and cancer research. So, as massive colliders seem ready to land on the endangered species list, it seems as good a time as any to explain what a particle collider is, how it works and what we as a society have to gain from the research.

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Visualized: step inside CERN’s particle-detecting Compact Muon Solenoid

Visualized Step inside CERN's particle detecting Compact Muon Solenoid

It's spring maintenance time over at the Large Hadron Collider, and the folks at CERN have seen fit to crack open the Compact Muon Solenoid to get at some of its loose connectors. You see, after three years, 99-percent of the the lead tungstate-based electromagnetic calorimeter's channels are currently operational -- but its keepers think it can do better, working on a less than reliable connection that has the preshower down to a paltry 97-percent. Naturally, they've cracked the thing open and thankfully given us a peek inside the beast.

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Source: CERN

Higgs boson Found says CERN


CERN presented new results from the LHC (Large hadron Collider) experiment. CERN says: "Having analyzed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they...