Large Hadron Collider to jump to maximum energy

Large Hadron Collider to jump to maximum energy - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist

The Large Hadron Collider is going to skip medium-energy proton collisions, jumping straight to its maximum energy in 2013, after it finishes collecting lower-energy data and has its circuitry upgraded.

The particle accelerator, located outside Geneva, Switzerland, has recovered from its 2008 accident. And in 2009 it broke the world record for particle collision energy when its two oppositely directed proton beams each reached 1.18 TeV, for a total energy of 2.36 TeV.

That made it slightly more powerful than its US competitor, Fermilab, which has been colliding particle beams with energies of 1 TeV, adding up to a total energy of 2 TeV.

After a brief holiday hiatus, the LHC is getting ready to start up again. Its managers have decided to carry out collisions for two years at 3.5 TeV per beam. At the end of 2011, it will shut down for a year for circuitry upgrades, returning in 2013 at its maximum design energy of 7 TeV per beam, or 14 TeV in total.

There had been talk of pushing the LHC to a middling energy of 5 TeV per beam prior to the shutdown at the end of 2011. But scientists apparently decided that was not worth the risk. During the shutdown, the LHC's electrical connections will be upgraded, making it more robust against short circuits of the kind that caused the 2008 accident.

While the LHC ramps up to maximum energy, Fermilab still has a chance of beating it to the discovery of the long-sought Higgs particle – responsible for endowing other particles with mass – but only if the Higgs turns out to be relatively lightweight.