The lord of the particle accelerator, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), went out of particle collision business for almost two years as of late last week. For particle physicists, Valentine’s Day 2013 will be remembered for the successful completion of phase 1 of the LHC’s operations.
But the two-year shutdown won’t involve much relaxing for the tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians involved in one of world’s largest scientific projects. During this period – known as the Long Shutdown 1 (LS1) – the LHC will undergo a significant upgrade and consolidation.
It will be an exciting and intense period. One part of the CERN team will be preparing the LHC to be operational again after its planned upgrade by 2015, while others will be finalising their results on the vast amount of data...
