Revamped collider to shine brighter light on physics mysteries at CERN

Lucio Rossi, HL-LHC project leader gestures during a news conference before a ceremony to launch the civil engineering works for the High Luminosity LHC Project (HL-LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland June 15, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

GENEVA (Reuters) - Europe's physics research centre CERN launched an upgrade of its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Friday, six years after the huge particle accelerator solved an enduring riddle by confirming the existence of the elusive Higgs boson.

Staff said the overhaul will boost the "luminosity" of proton-smashing experiments at the LHC, a 27-km (17-mile) ring under the Swiss-French border, increasing the number of particle collisions tenfold and producing a clearer picture of the sub-atomic world.