Large Hadron Collider set to resume work this month

After a two-year hiatus, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is set to resume work this month. The work at the LHC was hit when a metal fell into the works that created a short circuit. Built to study the smallest known building blocks of all things, called the Higgs Boson, or the God Particle, it aims at recreating the conditions that existed immediately after the big bang. While scientists try to figure out how to fix the collider, here are some quick facts:

The machine is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, world’s largest laboratory dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental science.

The LHC was designed to reveal the secrets of the universe by recreating the conditions that existed immediately after the big bang.

In top gear, the LHC can generate almost a billion collisions per second.



LHC is a 27-km circumference particle accelerator.



When the 27-km long circular tunnel at CERN was excavated, between lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range on the Franco-Swiss border, the two ends met up with just 1 cm of error.



The LHC took about a decade to construct, at a total cost of about $4.75 billion.

Verification of the theory that explains why the sun shines — the weak force — is one of CERN’s biggest achievements.

The LHC is the emptiest place in the solar system too. The beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum.

Part of the LHC will be the world’s largest fridge. It could hold 1,50,000 fridge full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space.

Source: Cern Website, News Reports