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The Large Hadron Collider's Second Run Will Break Energy Records

An inside look at how the atom smasher has been amped up

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After a two-year shutdown for $163 million in upgrades, the world's largest particle accelerator is booting back up this spring. Among other improvements, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva now has better connections between its magnets, which will support stronger fields and enable protons to crash together at the highest energies ever achieved. New particles could provide long-sought proof for theories such as supersymmetry that posit extra particles and dimensions in the universe. The collisions might even reveal new, heavier Higgs bosons to join the first Higgs discovery there in 2012.

SOURCE: FRÉDÉRICK BORDRY, DIRECTOR FOR ACCELERATORS AND TECHNOLOGY CERN (BY THE NUMBERS FIGURES)

Clara Moskowitz is chief of reporters at Scientific American, where she covers astronomy, space, physics and mathematics. She has been at Scientific American for more than a decade; previously she worked at Space.com. Moskowitz has reported live from rocket launches, space shuttle liftoffs and landings, suborbital spaceflight training, mountaintop observatories, and more. She has a bachelor’s degree in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University and a graduate degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 312 Issue 4This article was published with the title “Atom Smasher Amps Up” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 312 No. 4 (), p. 30
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0415-30a

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