Large Hadron Collider breaks beam intensity record again

According to the European nuclear research facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) now collides beams with a luminosity of 4.67x1032cm-2s-1, breaking the 4.024x1032cm-2s-1 record set in 2010 by the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the US. That record had in turn broken another set by Cern in 2009.

"Beam intensity is key to the success of the LHC, so this is a very important step," Cern director-general Rolf Heuer said in a statement on Friday. "Higher intensity means more data, and more data means greater discovery potential."

The LHC is a giant experiment, involving a 27km ring tunnel buried deep beneath the Alps, that aims to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang. One of the things Cern hopes to find is the Higgs boson: the particle's existence would prove some of the fundamental theories of physics. Rumors that the Higgs boson had been found were denied by a CERN spokesman who said they were based on a leaked "pre-memo."

For more on this story, read Cern's LHC breaks beam intensity record again on ZDNet UK.