Multi-Billion dollar experiment.

• 13 Mar 2011 Beginning of the 2011 run with proton beams.
• 21 Apr 2011 LHC becomes the world's highest-luminosity hadron accelerator achieving a peak luminosity of 4.67·1032 cm−2s−1, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 4·1032 cm−2s−1 held for one year.
• 24 May 2011 Quark–gluon plasma achieved.[65]
• 17 Jun 2011 The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 1 fb−1 of collected data.
• 14 Oct 2011 LHCb reaches 1 fb−1 of collected data.
• 23 Oct 2011 The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 5 fb−1 of collected data.
• 6 Nov 2011 Second run with lead ions.
• 22 Dec 2011 First new composite particle discovery, the χb (3P) bottomonium meson, observed with proton-proton collisions in 2011.
• 5 Apr 2012 First collisions with stable beams in 2012 after the winter shutdown. The energy is increased to 4 TeV per beam (8 TeV in collisions).
• 4 Jul 2012 First new elementary particle discovery, a new boson observed that is "consistent with" the theorized Higgs boson. (This has now been confirmed as the Higgs boson itself)
• 8 Nov 2012 First observation of the very rare decay of the Bs meson into two muons (Bs0 → μ+μ−), a major test of supersymmetry theories, shows results at 3.5 sigma that match the Standard Model rather than many of its super-symmetrical variants.
• 20 Jan 2013 Start of the first run colliding protons with Lead ions.
• 11 Feb 2013 End of the first run colliding protons with Lead ions.
• 14 Feb 2013 Beginning of the first long shutdown, to prepare the collider for a higher energy and luminosity.

When reactivated in early 2015, the LHC will operate with an energy of 13 TeV, almost double its current maximum energy.


And now we're into 2015.


LHC Ready to Hunt Down Mystery Dark Matter Particles

http://news.discovery.com/space/upgr...les-150218.htm

An upgraded, more powerful Large Hadron Collider, slated to begin returning to service next month, should open the door to new realms of physics, including possibly a glimpse of so-called “dark matter” particles, which, along with an equally mysterious dark energy force, dominate the universe.

http://www.livescience.com/49852-lar...scoveries.html

it will reach energies of 13 trillion electron volts, with enough current to melt 1 ton of copper. This run is expected to last until 2018.

1.Supersymmetric partners

Supersymmetry is a theory (or set of theories) that says particles, which are divided into two classes called bosons and fermions, are related and that every particle has a "partner." This means all the force-carrying particles (bosons) have a fermion partner, and all the fermions have boson partners. The gluino, for example, is the supersymmetric partner of the gluon. Gluons carry the strong nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together, so they are bosons. Gluinos would therefore be fermions.

However, supersymmetric partners have not been detected yet. This is an issue because some of the theoretical calculations show that at least a few should have appeared by now. That said, as the LHC runs its second set of experiments, physicists hope that they will see these supersymmetric partners, which would help narrow down which version of supersymmetry theory is correct, if any.

2. More than one Higgs?

The Higgs boson solved a major problem for the Standard Model, but it raised some important questions as well. Theories say there might be more than one kind, and the LHC's second run might help to answer how many Higgs bosons there are, and why the Higgs has the mass that it does. [Beyond Higgs: 5 Elusive Particles That May Lurk in the Universe]

3. Dark matter

Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that makes up some 25 percent of the mass and energy of the universe. Astronomers say there's about five times as much of it as normal matter, but dark matter only interacts with things via gravity. As such, a blob of dark matter in a box would be invisible. This makes it hard to figure out what it is.

The LHC, though, may generate enough energy to pop out a dark-matter particle from one of the collisions. Dark matter would have to be electrically neutral (no positive or negative charges) and not decay in a few seconds. "If we find something that looks like it could be dark matter at the LHC, we would try to measure as much as we can about it … and hopefully get hints of how to detect it directly in other experiments," said Jay Hauser, a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

4. Solving some problems of the Big Bang

Using heavier proton beams, such as gold or lead, the LHC will allow physicists to see what conditions were like just a few billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the birth of the universe. Exploring how matter behaves under these conditions can offer insights into how the universe evolved to appear as it does — why the first matter was mostly hydrogen and helium, and why it has the proportion of matter and antimatter that it does.