The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, will smash once again in the new year. After discovering the Higgs boson (the "God particle"), the particle accelerator went offline for upgrades. Now, two years later, researchers hope to discover other dimensions of reality and to uncover the identity of dark matter, according to Live Science.
The LHC has a circumference of 16 miles and it quickens particles to almost the speed of light using nearly 9,600 magnets. The LHC is made of more iron than the Eiffel Tower (10,000 tons). If the filaments in the magnets were stretched out, they "would stretch to the sun and back five times with enough left over for a few trips to the moon," according to Live Science.
The LHC is set for a run more powerful than its first (from 2010 to 2013).
"Doubling the energy will have a huge impact on the search for new particles at LHC," said experimental particle physicist Gabriella Sciolla, from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. "The higher the energy, the heavier the particle one can possibly produce."
Researchers hope to discover what particles comprise dark matter, Live Science reported. Dark matter is considered an invisible and mysterious substance that makes up five-sixths of all cosmic matter.
"By going to larger energies at the LHC, we increase the range of masses of potential dark matter particles that we can examine," experimental particle physicist Andrew Lankford at the University of California, told Live Science.
Lankford and Sciolla both work on LHC's ATLAS project.
"As the LHC is waking up, a lot of people are excited right now," Sciolla told Live Science. "There's a lot of enthusiasm here."
