Large Hadron Collidor Gets Faster

World's fastest particle smasher

The Large Hadron Collider is working more efficiently, physicists announced today, with more particles than ever before crammed into the particle accelerator's beams. 

Scientists successfully halved the space between the bunches of protons that fly through the LHC in sprays called beams. To observe unknown particles and interactions, physicists race these beams around a 17-mille-long (27 kilometers) underground ring on the border between France and Switzerland. Head-on collisions between protons give rise to short-lived, exotic particles, perhaps including the elusive Higgs Boson, the particle theorized to be responsible for bestowing mass on all other particles.