BBC:
In preparation for a two-year upgrade and repair period,
scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switched off
the proton beams early Thursday morning. It will take until
Saturday for the supercooled magnets to warm to room
temperature so that they can be inspected for repairs. The 2012
run, during which a possible Higgs particle was detected,
reached a beam collision energy of 8 TeV. When the collider
begins operations againâmdash;currently
planned for February or March 2015âmdash;the
energy will be increased to 14 TeV. During the downtime,
upgrades are planned for all four of the LHC's detectors, the
shielding for the electronics, and the ventilation system. The
scientists will also be working their way through all of the
data they collected during the 2012 run, which provided more
than twice as much data as the 2011 run.
