Today, the LHC once again began circulating beams of protons, for the first time this year.
This follows a 17-week-long extended technical stop. Over the past month, after the completion of the maintenance work that began in December 2016, each of the machines in the accelerator chain have, in turn, been switched on and checked until this weekend when the LHC, the final machine in the chain, could be restarted by the Operations team.
“It’s like an orchestra, everything has to be timed and working very nicely together. Once each of the parts is working properly, that’s when the beam goes in, in phases from one machine to the next all the way up to the LHC,” explains Rende Steerenberg, who leads the operations group responsible for the whole accelerator complex, including the LHC.
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