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Geneva, 26 April 2007. A ceremony was held at CERN1 today to mark the end of a crucial phase of installation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A large dipole magnet was symbolically lowered into the tunnel at 12:00. This completes the basic installation of the more than 1700 magnets that make up the collider, which measures 27 km in circumference and is scheduled to be commissioned at the end of 2007.
When in operation, about seven thousand scientists from eighty countries will have access to the LHC, the largest national contingent (seven hundred) being from the United States. Physicists hope to use the collider to enhance their ability to answer the following questions:
Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model violated? If not, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?[2]
Will the more precise measurements of the masses of baryons continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?
Do particles have supersymmetric ("SUSY") partners?
Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?
Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?
What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?