Switzerland: 'Large Hadron Collider' successfully started again after two-year break

Physicists successfully managed to restart the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) after a 27-month maintenance break at the CERN facility in Meyrin, Wednesday. Two stable proton beams were guided through the 27km (16.7 mile) long LHC ring and then made to collide at their designated points at 10:40 local time (9:40 GMT). Director-General of CERN, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, congratulated everyone on the “fantastic achievement" before expressing excitement at the possibility of discovering "new physics." During the first run physicists observed the Higgs boson, which is the last missing particle in the Standard Model. This time atoms are to be smashed together at a record energy of 13 tera-electron volts (TeV), almost doubling the previous rate. CERN spokesperson Guy Wilkinson expressed hope initial results will appear "within a couple of months" but a full analysis of the process could take up to four years. CERN physicists are hoping to produce new evidence on “dark matter”, which is largely believed to make up 96 percent of the universe but is totally invisible. In addition, they also want to test the theory of “supersymmetry” which predicts a partner particle for every known particle in the Standard Model.