After a three-year-long break, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, restarted their particle accelerator – the world’s largest and most powerful accelerator.
The Large Hadron Collider had been repaired and upgraded, and scientists intend to use it to collide protons and discover more about the origins of the universe. The LHC, built by CERN between 1998 and 2008, is the world’s largest particle collider, housed in a 17-mile-circumference tunnel buried up to 175 meters deep near Geneva. It accelerates high-energy particle beams to near-lightspeed, where they collide at four points.
People have attempted to sue CERN in the past for endangering public safety, implying an element of fear about the negative effects of employing unparalleled technology.
