Is the LHC working?

Under the new schedule, the LHC will restart in May 2021, two months after the initially planned date, and Run 3 will be extended by one year, until the end of 2024. The High-Luminosity LHC is scheduled to come into operation at the end of 2027.

What happens inside the LHC ring?

The LHC accelerates beams of particles, usually protons, around and around a 17-mile ring until they reach 99.9999991 percent the speed of light. During the acceleration process (the so-called ramp), the energy of protons increases, and the energy of the photons they emit also increases.

How deep underground is the LHC?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. The accelerator sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

How would the scientist justify many of her assumptions?

The scientist performing the experiment described above would justify many of her assumptions by performing additional tests in parallel with the experimental ones. For example, she would separately test whether substance B affects bacterial growth to check that it was indeed inert as she’d assumed.

What is an example of an assumption in science?

Much as we might like to avoid it, all scientific tests involve making assumptions — many of them justified. For example, imagine a very simple test of the hypothesis that substance A stops bacterial growth.

Are there any reasonable assumptions that can be tested?

Technically, these are all assumptions, but they are perfectly reasonable ones that can be tested. The scientist performing the experiment described above would justify many of her assumptions by performing additional tests in parallel with the experimental ones.

Why are some assumptions in microbiology still untested?

And some assumptions might remain untested simply because all of our knowledge about the field suggests that the assumption is a safe one (e.g., we know of no reason why bacteria should multiply faster when their dishes are marked with a red, rather than a green, pen).