The Large Hadron Collider has been closed since December 2018 for maintenance and upgrades
The Large Hadron Collider has been closed since December 2018 for maintenance and upgrades.

After a three-year break, the Large Hadron collider was back in action on Friday in the hopes of making new discoveries.

The Standard Model of particle physics will be put to the test after several recent anomalies raised questions about our understanding of how the universe works.

Europe's physics lab said in a statement that two beams of protons traveled in opposite directions around the Large Hadron collider.

The collider has been closed for more than a year for maintenance and upgrades, which is the second longest shutdown in its 14-year history.

The collider is taking it easy.

A relatively small number of protons were circulating at 450 billion electronvolts.

The head of the beams department at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Rhodri Jones, said that high-intensity, high-energy collisions are a couple of months away.

The experts will work around the clock to get the collider ready to set a new record.

Credit: CERN

Four years of massive data collecting and analyzing by the collider's four main experiments began after the reopening.

The Standard Model of particle physics has failed to account for several recent measurements and dark matter, which is thought to make up a significant amount of the universe.

The current theory of the Standard Model seems to be breaking down, according to a particle physicist at Cambridge University.

The particles called beauty quarks, which he works on at the Large Hadron beauty (LHCb) experiment, seem to be influenced by a force that we have never detected before.

There is a lot of evidence that we are about to discover something new affecting beauty quarks, which would be a really big deal.

Maybe there is a new force of nature that we haven't seen before.

More information: CERN: Large Hadron Collider restarts: home.web.cern.ch/news/news/acc … on-collider-restarts

There will be a new year in 2022.

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