What time will CERN turn on the Large Hadron Collider?
TODAY scientists will re-start the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator to test the extremes of physics - after it was shut down three YEARS ago.
CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research, is launching Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 10 years since the ground-breaking scientific discovery of the "God particle".
What time will CERN turn on the Large Hadron Collider?
Commemorations for the special anniversary kicked off this weekend, but the switch-on of the "Big Bang" atom-smasher is set for just a few hours - 9am CST.
The start of LHC Run 3 will be live-streamed on all CERN's social media channels from their base in Geneva, on the Franco-Swiss border.
Yesterday a packed auditory listened to scientist Peter Higgs speak about his incredible discovery of the Higgs boson, or "God particle", 10 years ago.
His Nobel-prize winning find was one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in the last century as the particle confirmed scientists' theories about the origin of the universe that had been debated for decades.
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What is CERN doing?
The accelerator - an enormous, 17 mile ring of superconducting magnets, 100 meters underground - was shut down three years ago for significant repairs and upgrades.
Now the structure is ready to fire-up again to research the world's tiniest particles - allowing scientists to make monumental discoveries about how the universe works.
Inside the LHC, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide.
The experiments are extremely precise, as the magnets have to be kept at -456.34 Fahrenheit - colder than outer space - and the particles are so tiny making them collide is like firing two needles over six miles apart to meet halfway.
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The LHC will run around the clock for close to four years at a record energy, providing greater precision and discovery potential than ever before.
Scientists will be looking at the "God particle" 10 years after its discovery with unprecedented precision and in new channels.
They will also study the properties of matter under extreme temperature and density, searching for dark matter and other new phenomena.
Andreas Hoecker, spokesman of the Atlas collaboration, said: "We will measure the strengths of the Higgs boson interactions with matter and force particles to unprecedented precision, and we will further our searches for Higgs boson decays to dark matter particles as well as searches for additional Higgs bosons."
Why are there conspiracy theories surrounding today's launch?
As the landmark anniversary of the scientific discovery nears, quirky theories and claims have wandered into the realms of fantasy.
Researchers at CERN have been and apprised of .
But Stranger Things fanatics are taking a giant leap to connect the real-life CERN to the show's nightmarish "Upside Down" dimension.
People have shared their superstitions regarding the "portal" that will open after two high-energy particle beams are set to travel at close to the speed of light before they collide.
"T-MINUS 2 hours for the atlas project tests their hadron collider. I really hope you don't rip a hole in space/time, create a mulitverse or start a real life stranger things." one Twitter user .
"What if CERN really did open a portal to hell or something," one person .
"Anyways, @CERN is opening a multi-dimensional portal on July, 5 and will be using dark matter! Everything is fine," someone else on Twitter.
CERN was in the news after the hit show Stranger Things was released in 2016.
Scientists have posited that we can use gravity to test for the possibility that other dimensions exist, and the LHC has been critically looked at for this reason.
";One way of seeing evidence for other dimensions involves gravity - specifically, the theoretical particle associated with the gravity called the graviton," reported .
"One theory suggests that the graviton may move in all dimensions, not just the ones we live in.
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"And if we can create gravitons at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, we might be able to see evidence of them leaving our dimensions for other ones."
This theory and the hit TV show were a catalyst for people to feel excited for July 5th's events.
