News from CERN: the beams of protons circulating in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) collided for the first time at the record-breaking energy of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV) during the night between 20-21 May.
Last month proton beams were back in the accelerator for the first time after two years of intense maintenance and consolidation of the World’s largest particle collider, LHC. The first beam at the record energy of 6.5 TeVcirculated on 10 April, and the first collisions – at the lower beam energy of 450 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) – followed.
The test collisions from last night were to set up systems that protect the machine and detectors from particles that stray from the edges of the beam. Data taking at ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb experiments at CERN and the start the LHC’s second run is planned for early June.
During May-November 2015, ISS researchers are running data quality monitoring shifts at the ALICE experiment (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). Follow updates of their activity here.