The largest particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), went into 'hibernation' two weeks early: the decision to shorten the time for the year-end technical stop Yeats) is part of the package of measures taken by CERN in Geneva to reduce consumption in the face of the international energy crisis.
The winter break marks the end of 'Run 3' data capture, which began in the spring when the accelerator returned to operation after more than three years of maintenance required to upgrade it.
With 3,200 billion collisions supplied to the various experiments, this Run 3 - Cern recalls on Twitter - made it possible to obtain collisions at a record energy of 13.6 TeV, the longest period in which the accelerator was traveled by particles (equal to 57.4 hours) and marked the highest peak of luminosity.
