CERN's Large Hadron Collider Begins Major Upgrade for High-Luminosity Era

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been switched off to commence Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), an extensive upgrade program that will transform it into the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This multi-year effort involves significant maintenance, consolidation, and installation work, including replacing over 1.2 kilometers of the accelerator with new systems and upgrading detectors to handle up to ten times more particle collisions. The HL-LHC is expected to begin gradual restarting in 2028, with full scientific operation by 2030, aiming to enable precision studies of the Higgs boson and explore physics beyond the Standard Model.