The LHC accelerator starts to rest

On Monday, December 6, 2010, scientists stopped all experiments on the world's largest particle accelerator LHC. On the website of the LHC, the words 'End of run 2010' appear.


In two months the machine stopped working, scientists checked the status of each step, corrected what needed to be fixed and modernized some parts.

According to the plan, at the end of February, the beginning of March of the following year, the machine will work again and continue experimenting with protons. In late 2011, the bombardment of lead ions continued. Recently, after a focused experiment, physicists studied the state of matter that existed at the first moment after the Big Bang.

After the collision of lead ions, a cluster of durable particles began to circle in the machine, the physicists determined the combination of quarks and gluons separated from protons and neutrons after the Big Bang. They argue that in the first seconds of the universe ' life ' is a very hot and super-dense ' bowl of quarks ' in which quarks begin to combine together into a giant set.

The LHC is a particle accelerator used to generate fundamental particles. In a 27km-long circular tunnel, proton beams are launched at a flat speed with the speed of light puzzle colliding with each other. Researching the results of these collisions, scientists hope to gain new data about the structure of matter.

The LHC is built on the territory of France and Switzerland, under the management of the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), an Organization currently comprising 20 countries.