Scientists at CERN observe three “exotic” particles for first time

Restarting the collider is a complex procedure

Scientists at Europe’s physics research center will this week fire up the 27 kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that found the Higgs boson particle, after a shutdown for maintenance and upgrades was prolonged by COVID-19 delays.

Restarting the collider is a complex procedure, and researchers at the CERN center have champagne on hand if all goes well, ready to join a row of bottles in the control room celebrating landmarks including the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle a decade ago.

“It’s not flipping a button,” Rende Steerenberg, in charge of control room operations, told Reuters. “This comes with a certain sense of tension, nervousness.”

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Potential pitfalls include the discovery of an obstruction; the shrinking of materials due to a nearly 300 degree temperature swing; and difficulties with thousands of magnets that help keep billions of particles in a tight beam as they circle the collider tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border.

Read more: Reuters