The Large Hadron Collider has already began the process of smashing protons together for the first time since it has been shut down in 2013 for energy upgrades in order to push the boundaries of particle physics even further and discover the secrets of the universe.

During the first run of the particle collisions, the collider was set to relatively low energy levels that were part of the preparations for the next stage of experiments at CERN which is the European nuclear research facility near Geneva, Switzerland.

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Colliding protons involve beams being sent in opposite directions around a 17 mile circumference inside the Large Hadron Collider. When these two beams meet in a circle, they will smash together these protons with powerful gigaelectronvolts of energy. 

This latest round of experiments will reach higher energies of 6.5 teraelectronvolts per beam that can result in collisions at 13 TeV.

On Tuesday, the first collisions released these subatomic particles into the powerful machine's giant detectors into a cascade. According to Atlas detector official, Dave Charlton, this is an important milestone where there were a lot of smiles in the control room today.

Apart from the Atlas detector, there are three other detectors for the Large Hadron Collider which are CMS, LHCb and Alice, which all recorded breakthrough results from the new tests.

Lower powered collisions can also allow the physicists to tune and calibrate the experiments in order to prepare higher energy runs.

CERN officials state that the LHC team continues to test each component and system including algorithms one by one so that all experiments go through a checklist that can assure their full functionality. This is also to prevent mistakes, bugs or failures during collisions that will be delivered at 13 TeV.

In 2012, the LHC team reached a milestone where they discovered the Higgs boson particle or the "God Particle" that is considered to be the underlying component in the Standard Model of Physics that confers mass in all other fundamental particles.

These new, high powered experiments can also result in evidence of dark matter particles where scientists believe these make up the majority of the mass of the universe.

To date, LHC operations are now halfway thru an eight week period of testing all systems in order to secure all equipment that they can be successful in higher energy collisions that will commence in June.

TagsLHC, Large Hadron Collider, CERN, particle collider, dark mater, LHC restarts first particle collisions