LHC Restarts High-Energy Quest For Exotic Physics

astroengine writes: It's official: After a long 27 month hiatus for upgrades and a 2 month restart, the world's largest particle accelerator is back in the particle collision business. As of 10:40 a.m. CET (5:40 a.m. ET), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was running at record-breaking energies and collecting science data. Physicists now expect the particle collider to run non-stop for the next 3 years. We are in a new era of high-energy particle physics where, for the first time, we don't exactly know what we'll find. "With the LHC back in the collision-production mode, we celebrate the end of two months of beam commissioning," said CERN Director of Accelerators and Technology Frédérick Bordry in a press release. "It is a great accomplishment and a rewarding moment for all of the teams involved in the work performed during the long shutdown of the LHC, in the powering tests and in the beam commissioning process. All these people have dedicated so much of their time to making this happen."

Comments

Re:I'm pretty sure what we'll find.

[jandrese]

Oh yes, all of those Particle Physicists definitely got in it for the money... Check out that 15 year old Volvo lifestyle!

Curiously...

[Anonymous Coward]

These people spent billions of dollars to get experimental results that they expect they won't be able to explain, at least right away. Their highest hope? To stumble upon new physics.

Yet when it comes to the EM Drive or as we saw yesterday, strange results from a sheet of graphine and a laser, it's all Bull Shit, poor Science, charlatans, etc.

Re:This is incredible

[david_thornley]

Our understanding of physics is wrong. We know that. Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity don't work together. We have two exceedingly successful theories, at least one of which is wrong. In order to resolve this, we have to break something so we can get some clue as to what's really happening.

Back around 1900, we were in a similar situation, with physics seeming to be nearly complete. It needed little more than explanations for black-body radiation and the failure of Michelson-Morley to find ether drift. Of course, these explanations turned out to be fairly involved.