The first high-energy collisions with stable beams in 2025!
After the winter break, the LHC has resumed operations for Run 3, with first collisions at 13.6 TeV now occurring. Proton bunches will gradually increase to over 2400 per beam. A “Run” 🏃is a multi-year operating period with scheduled breaks for upgrades. The LHC uses beams made of proton bunches—each containing over 100 billion protons (10^11)—that collide at near light speed. “Stable beams” simply indicates that all systems are ready for data collection, so if the detector is switched on and started it will be able to collect recordings of collisions. The Winter shutdowns allow for maintenance and detector upgrades and do it at the time when the energy for running the LHC and experiments would be most expensive. An interesting fact for people from the US that might be surprised by this statement: in Europe AC is not commonly used during the summer and electricity is most expensive in the Winter time when people heat their houses.