SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

LHC Gets Colder than Deep Space

from BBC News Online

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has once again become one of the coldest places in the Universe. All eight sectors of the LHC have now been cooled to their operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F)--colder than deep space.

The large magnets that bend particle beams around the LHC are kept at this frigid temperature using liquid helium. The magnets are arranged end-to-end in a 27km-long circular tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border.

The cool-down is an important milestone ahead of the collider's scheduled re-start in the latter half of November.