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March 11, 2018
Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Image Credit: CERN
On 9 March 2018, marks the end of CERN’s annual winter shut down. The Laboratory’s massive accelerator complex will soon begin to lumber out of its winter hibernation and resume accelerating and colliding particles.
But while the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has not been filled with protons since the Year-End Technical Stop (YETS) began on 4 December 2017, its tunnels and experimental caverns have been packed with people performing maintenance and repairs as well as testing components for future accelerators.
What's up at CERN during the "winter shutdown"?
Video above: Watch this short overview of activities from around the LHC ring during the YETS (Video: CERN).
CERN’s Engineering department hands the accelerator complex back to the Beams department, who will commence hardware commissioning for 2018. This commissioning will culminate in the restart of the LHC, planned for early April.
Find out more about what has been happening during the winter shutdown for the LHC, the injectors and the experiments.
Note:
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.
Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.
Related links:
Large Hadron Collider (LHC): https://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider
For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: https://home.cern/
Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Achintya Rao.
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