Upgrade

After a two-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is beginning to fire back up. The newest particle accelerator, Linac 4, completed its first test run over the past few weeks, and will produce much more powerful beams.

The Hercules laser, the most intense laser in the world, currently fires a beam of 300 TW. But by upgrading components that could increase to 1,000 TW, advancing astrophysics research and enabling more precise, faster and cheaper medical x-rays.