Winter therapy for the accelerators

When the accelerators are asleep, the technical teams get to work. Since 14 December, no particles have circulated in any part of CERN's accelerator chain, from the particle source to the intermediate rings and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) itself. The annual year-end technical stop provides an opportunity to carry out maintenance work on equipment and repair any damage as well as to upgrade the machines for the upcoming runs. "We started planning this technical stop as early as June 2015," sa