CERN has begun disconnecting the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) stretches 27 km around and relies on thousands of magnets of different types - dipoles, quadrupoles, sextupoles, octupoles, decapoles, etc. - to steer and control its particle beams. Each type performs a specialized task.

Some of the most important are known as inner triplets. These groups of three quadrupole magnets (hence the name) sit on both sides of the LHC's four main experiments. Their job is to focus the particle beams as tightly as possible just before the particles collide inside the detectors.

The tighter the beams are "compressed," the greater the chance that particles will collide. That makes the inner triplets essential for increasing the LHC's luminosity, i.e. the number of collisions that occur in a given period of time. More luminosity means more collisions, giving researchers more data to analyze.