Had it not been for the helium leak, today would have been the first day of high energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. As it happens, we will need to wait until the spring to see the first real experimental data.
No Higgs Boson for now
Skip to content
climate change activist and science communicator; event photographer; amateur mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
No Higgs in ’08?
Oh, the sadness.
The machine has a winter break, designed to avoid drawing masses of power at a time of peak demand.
Hadron Collider relaunch delayed
The Large Hadron Collider could be switched back on in September – a year after it shut down due to a malfunction and several months later than expected.
Scientists had said they expected the £3.6bn ($5.4bn) machine to be repaired by November, but then pushed the date back to June, before the latest delay.
Collider ‘needs warning system’
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
An official investigation into the accident at the Large Hadron Collider has recommended that an early warning system be installed.
Large, Luscious QTVR Panoramas of Compact Muon Solenoid (and other “big science” scenes at CERN, Switzerland)
Posted by Xeni Jardin, February 27, 2009 9:58 AM | permalink
Fermilab Discovers Untheorized Particle
alevy writes to mention that scientists at Fermilab have detected a new, completely untheorized particle. Seems like Fermi has been a hotbed of activity lately with the discovery of a new single top quark and narrowing the gap twice on the Higgs Boson particle.
Austria To Pull Out of CERN
By kdawson on matter-of-concern
“Austrian particle physicists are not happy with this. From HEPHY, the Austrian Institute for High Energy Physics: ‘All of a surprise Johannes Hahn… announced that he wants to terminate the Austrian membership at CERN… This [would] affect spin-off projects like the planned cancer treatment center MedAustron… which is dependent on collaborating with CERN… Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC…’ Will other countries follow suit?” “Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The €20M ($26.9M) yearly membership in CERN… makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said. Hahn said he hoped Austria could find ‘a new kind of cooperation’ with CERN and described Vienna’s withdrawal from the project as a ‘pause,’ noting that some 30 states were already working together with the Geneva-based centre without being members. The newly-available funds will now allow Austria to take part in new European projects, boost its participation in old ones as well as help the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the country’s main organization funding research.”
LHC gets warning system upgrade
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
Engineers hope an early warning system being installed at the Large Hadron Collider could prevent incidents of the kind which shut the machine last year.
The helium leak last September, which resulted from a “faulty splice” between magnets, has delayed the start of science operations by more than a year.
Officials aim to re-start the collider, known as the LHC, in mid-November.
LHC Shut Down Again — By Baguette-Dropping Bird
“Is Douglas Adams scripting the saga of sorrows facing the LHC? These time-traveling Higgs-Boson particles certainly exhibit the sign of his absurd sense of humor! Perhaps it is the Universe itself, conspiring against the revelations intimated by the operation of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? This time, it is not falling cranes, cracked magnets, liquid helium leaks or even links to Al Qaeda, that have halted man’s efforts to understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It now appears that the collider is hindered from an initial firing by a baguette, dropped by a passing bird: ‘The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant overheating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.'”
LHC: Beams back in business!
By Phil Plait on LHC
Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider once again had a beam of protons whizzing around its 27 km-long circumference!
After a series of setbacks — some devastating, holding up the world’s largest scientific experiment for many months — this milestone achieved shows that the collider is heading back to full operations, which should get started again next year. There will be press conference about this on Monday November 23rd at 1:00 p.m. GMT, which will be webcast live.
LHC knocked out by ANOTHER power failure
‘Birdy bread-bomber from the future’ involved?
By Lewis Page • Get more from this author
Posted in Physics, 2nd December 2009 10:00 GMT
The Large Hadron Collider – most puissant particle-punisher ever assembled by the human race – has suffered another major power failure, knocking not only the atomsmasher itself but even its associated websites offline. The machine remains unserviceable at present. However its crucial cryogenics seem to have been unaffected, and no catastrophic damage is thought to have occurred.
Probably No Higgs in ’09, either.
Pan dimensional police to the rescue!
LHC Will Be Shut Down In 2011 Because of “Mistake”
“It’s to be expected when pushing the frontiers of physics, but the LHC’s epic “will it or won’t it” saga continues. Due to an unforeseen construction mistake, the LHC will cease experiments for a year (starting around late-2011) so repairs and upgrades can be carried out. For now, accelerated particles will have a maximum energy of 7TeV (half the power of the LHC’s design maximum), which is ample for at least 18 months of experiments before shutdown.”