CERN launches high-energy machine to boost collider data
The linear accelerator Linac 4 is the newest accelerator acquisition since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Maximilien Brice/ CERN
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: CERN launches high-energy machine to boost collider data
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) outside Geneva has inaugurated a linear accelerator that injects and accelerates high-energy particle beams into the 27-kilometre circular Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The upgrade should eventually help experiments gather ten times more collider data.
This content was published on
2 minutes
I am a climate and science/technology reporter. I am interested in the effects of climate change on everyday life and scientific solutions.
Born in London, I am a dual citizen of Switzerland and the UK. After studying modern languages and translation, I trained as a journalist and joined swissinfo.ch in 2006. My working languages are English, German, French and Spanish.
On Tuesday, CERN announced the official launch of Linac 4, a 90-metre-long underground linear accelerator, which represents the first link in CERN’s accelerator chain and should deliver higher energy particle beams for many experiments.
CERN director-general Fabiola Gianotti said Linac 4 and the ongoing upgrade programme should “considerably increase the potential of the LHC experiments for discovering new physics and measuring the properties of the Higgs particle in more detail”.
The elusive Higgs boson, whose discovery secured the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013, answered fundamental questions about how matter attained mass. But it did not solve the riddle of what’s missing from the “standard model” of physics.
The CHF6.5 billion ($6.47 billion) LHC, conceived in the early 1980s, is the biggest particle collider ever built. It sits in a circular tunnel, 100 metres below the ground at CERN on the French-Swiss border, north of Geneva.
The Linac 4, which replaces a model in service since 1978, cost CHF93 million ($93 million) and took ten years to build. It should deliver to the LHC over three times the energy of its predecessor. This increase in energy, together with the use of hydrogen ions, will enable double the particle beam intensity to be delivered to the LHC, thus contributing to an increase in the luminosity of the LHC.
Ultimately, CERN scientists studying the particle collisions should be able to gather about ten times more data. This should lead to more accurate measurements of fundamental particles, as well as the possibility of observing rare processes, it said.
After an extensive testing period, Linac 4 will be connected to CERN’s accelerator complex during a technical shut down in 2019-20.
Related Stories
Popular Stories
More
International Geneva
A Geneva-based global health foundation came close to ‘collapse’. Where were regulators?
FIFA loses multi-million lawsuit against Blatter and Kattner
This content was published on
Former FIFA officials Joseph Blatter and Markus Kattner do not have to pay back their own bonuses or the bonus totalling CHF 23 million paid to another FIFA official to FIFA. This was decided by the Zurich Labour Court.
How cancer cells makes healthy cells work for them
This content was published on
Cancer cells manipulate neighbouring cells for their own purposes: a research team at ETH Zurich has discovered that they can reprogram neighbouring cells in such a way that they help the tumour to grow.
This content was published on
The ban on non-residents entering the swimming pool in Porrentruy, canton Jura, expires on Sunday and would be extended until the end of the season, the mayor said.
Natural disasters: most Swiss back forced resettlement
This content was published on
The authorities should be allowed to order forced relocations if there is a medium-term risk of a natural event, according to 58% of participants in a survey.
US ends duty-free for parcels from all over the world
This content was published on
Postal service providers in numerous countries such as Switzerland have announced that they will no longer accept most parcels destined for the US.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Cern off the hook over higher wages for researchers
This content was published on
Cern’s research institutes must ensure that their research staff have sufficient financial means to cover their living costs and adequate social support.
This content was published on
“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is on standby mode, following technical issues in the last 24 hours, including a power cut due to the passage of a weasel on a 66 kV/18kV electrical transformer,” European Organization for Nuclear Research (CernExternal link) spokesman Arnaud Marsollier told swissinfo.ch on Friday. He said the affected part of the…
This content was published on
Quarks are the tiny ingredients of sub-atomic particles such as protons and neutrons, which are made of three quarks. The less common and more unstable mesons, particles found in cosmic rays, have four. A five-quark version, or pentaquark, has been sought, but never found, ever since Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig theorised the existence of…
This content was published on
CERN researchers made scientific history yesterday when they used the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to run proton beam collisions at an energy level of 13 TeV (tera-electronvolts).
This content was published on
In a live blogExternal link covering the restart, CERN said on Sunday that one of the two beams had completed the 27km circuit of the LHC, beneath the Swiss-French border near Geneva. The LHC had been shut down for two years for a refit of its machinery and wiring. CERN spent about $150 million (CHF144…
This content was published on
The new and improved Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world's most powerful particle accelerator – is being prepared to be restarted, at almost twice the energy of its initial three-year run.
Large Hadron Collider set to go at double power in 2015
This content was published on
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on Friday that all of its teams are hard at work ensuring that the LHC will be set to go again next year as planned. The 27km-long particle accelerator is close to being cooled to the necessary temperature of “1.9 degrees above absolute zero”. The CERN Control…
This content was published on
“We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle consistent with the Higgs Boson – which one? That remains open,” Cern Director General Rolf Heuer told a seminar at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva on Wednesday. “This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.