Chinese scientists have successfully finished a five-year upgrade aimed at keeping the country's electron-positron collider (EPC) a leading global high-tech device.
With the upgrading, the collider's capability has been raised by more than 30 times, Academician Chen Hesheng, director of the high-energy physics institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said Tuesday.
China finished its first physics collider, Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC), in 1988. It enabled the country's scientists to carry out cutting-edge research in high-energy fields independent of foreign installations.
Scientists used the BEPC to make different particulates, such as electrons, protons or neutrons, collide by giving them extremely high energies.
The CAS high-energy physics institute started the upgrade project for the BEPC in 2004 with an investment of 640 million yuan (94 million U.S. dollars) to meet more research needs.
Chen said the BEPC's new capability is five times better than the collider at Cornell University in the United States.(Xinhua)