The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland, was just switched back on for the third time after a three-year hiatus planned to implement upgrades. In the 14 years since it was first turned on, the particle accelerator has explored some of the biggest mysteries in the universe, colliding countless particles at near the speed of light in a tunnel 100 metres (328 feet) underground. One of the most amazing things about the LHC is that scientists don’t know exactly what might happen when they smash protons together at nearly the speed of light. Despite its years of driving groundbreaking science, at the end of Run 2 in 2018, scientists estimated that the LHC had only delivered about three per cent of the data expected in its lifetime. with Run 3 about to begin, it’s just getting started.
THE HIGGS BOSON
1 Probably the most famous discovery to come out of the LHC to date, the Higgs boson is an elementary particle, the existence of which was confirmed in 2012 at the LHC. But there is still a lot to be learned from studying the strange particle.
The particle is associated with what is called the Higgs field, which gives mass to other elementary or fundamental particles like electrons and the quarks that make up protons. The particle even gets its own mass from interactions with the Higgs field. But not
