Scientists prepare CERN collider restart in hunt for 'dark matter'

Physicists hope the resum­ption of collisions will help in their quest for so-called "dark matter" that lies beyond the visible universe.

Scientists at Europe’s physics research centre will this week fire up the 27 km-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that found the Higgs boson particle, after a shutdown for maintenance and upgrades was prolonged by Covid-19 delays.
 

Restarting the collider is a complex procedure, and rese­a­rchers at the CERN centre have champagne on hand if all goes well, ready to join a row of bottles in the control room celebrating landmarks including the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle a decade ago.
 

“It’s not flipping a button,” Rende Steerenberg, in charge of control room operations, told Reuters. “This comes