GENEVA: Seven months after its scientists made a landmark discovery that may explain the mysteries of mass, Europe's top physics lab will take a break from smashing invisible particles to recharge for the next leap into the unknown.
From Thursday, the cutting-edge facilities at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) will begin winding down, then go offline on Saturday for an 18-month upgrade.
A vast underground lab straddling the border between France and Switzerland, Cern's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was the scene of an extraordinary discovery announced in July 2012.
Its scientists said they were 99.9% certain they had found the elusive Higgs Boson, an invisible particle without which, theorists say, humans and all the other joined-up atoms in the Universe would not exist.
The upgrade will boost the LHC's energy capacity, essential for Cern to confirm definitively that its boson is the Higgs, and allow it to probe new dimensions like supersymmetry and dark matter.
"The aim is to open the discovery domain," said Frederick Bordry, head of Cern's technology department.
"We have what we think is the Higgs, and now we have all the theories about supersymmetry and so on. We need to increase the energy to look at more physics. It's about going into terra incognita (unknown territory)."
Editor's note:
Mark your calendar...July / August 2014 shall prove to be the start of a stunning revelation... or deception.
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