CERN shuts down Large Hadron Collider until 2030, upgrading the atom smasher to its most powerful form yet

A woman and a man wearing hardhats and construction suits walk down a tunnel lit with blue light.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher, has entered a planned four-year shutdown that will upgrade it to its most capable form yet.

The particle accelerator was switched off Monday (June 29) and is scheduled to come back online in 2030 as the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HiLumi LHC), with improvements that will allow it to smash together roughly 10 times more particles than its original design. That data could help spark new discoveries in fundamental physics and shed light on the nature of dark matter, antimatter and the early universe.