World's largest particle smasher halts for upgrade to boost hunt for dark matter

Some of the 1232 dipole magnets that bend the path of accelerated protons are pictured in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will be shut down for four years of renovations

MEYRIN (SWITZERLAND) - The world's most powerful particle accelerator will Monday shutter operations for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision-capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe: dark matter.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- a 27-kilometre proton-smashing circular tunnel at the heart of Europe's physics lab CERN near Geneva -- has most famously been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, dubbed "the God particle".