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June 4, 2015

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Particle smasher resumes experiments

Scientists hailed a 鈥渘ew era鈥 in their quest to unravel more mysteries of the universe as the world鈥檚 biggest particle smasher yesterday began experiments with nearly doubled energy levels in a key breakthrough.

The tests at the European Organization for Nuclear Research came after a sweeping two-year revamp of the collider and will help scientists to study fundamental particles, the building blocks of all matter, and the forces that control them.

During its next run, researchers will look for evidence of 鈥渘ew physics鈥 and probe 鈥渟upersymmetry鈥 鈥 a theoretical concept informally dubbed Susy; seek explanations for enigmatic dark matter and look for signs of extra dimensions.

Yesterday鈥檚 collisions of 13 teraelectonvolts followed a muscling of the Large Hadron Collider used in 2012 to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson, which confers mass and is also known as the God particle.

CERN said everything went according to plan at the giant lab, a 27-kilometer ring-shaped tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border.

During what it dubbed as its 鈥淪eason Two,鈥 the LHC will in the course of the next three years strive to fill gaps in the so-called 鈥淪tandard Model鈥 鈥 the mainstream theory of how the visible Universe was created but which does not explain dark matter.

鈥淚t is time for new physics!鈥 declared CERN鈥檚 outgoing director general Rolf Heuer.


 

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