LHC now world’s most powerful collider

The collider became the world’s most powerful accelerator on 29 November. Since then CERN staff have been increasing the beam intensity, which in turn increases the number of potential collisions that can occur.The speed at which the LHC is becoming operational has only been surpassed by the speed at which the first LHC paper using collision data was prepared and submitted by the ALICE collaboration . The paper was accepted by the European Physical Journal C on December 1.The LHC is scheduled to shut down on 18 December for a two-week winter break. Early next year the beams will be increased in energy, first to 2 TeV and then up to 3.5 TeV, roughly half of the final operational energies the machine is expected to run at later in its lifetime.One unknown side effect to the delays the LHC has faced this year is how expensive running the LHC during the winter will be to CERN. In past years high-energy experiments were shut down for winter, partly to conduct maintenance but also because electricity rates are 45% higher than in the summer. Related LHC news picks Paul Guinnessy