LHC Gets Warning System Upgrade

Cern has spent about 40m Swiss Francs (£24m) on repairs to the LHC

From The BBC:

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.

The vast physics lab is built inside a 27km-long circular tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border near Geneva.

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The Race To The Higgs Boson: LHC Versus Tevatron

Tevatron Fermilab

From Popular Science:

While the LHC's in the shop for repairs from its massive breakdown last September, an older particle accelerator might beat them to finding the Higgs boson, the fundamental particle thought to give matter mass.

At a conference last week, Tevatron physicists threw down the gauntlet, vowing that by 2011, the Tevatron accelerator (located at Fermi National Accelerator Lab outside Chicago) will be able to definitively prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson.

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Physicists Hold Breath As Large Hadron Collider Prepares To Rise From Ashes

A region between two magnets in the LHC that was crushed in the incident on 19 September 2008. Photograph: Public Domain

From The Guardian:

If all goes to plan, the LHC will come back to life in November. Sam Wong explains the measures being taken to prevent another catastrophic failure, and gauges the mood of physicists at Cern. Can they bag the Higgs before the Americans?

It's been nearly a year since the world's biggest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was fired up for the first time in a flurry of excitement at Cern, the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. But ever since a catastrophic explosion in the particle accelerator's tunnel just nine days after startup, the gargantuan machine has sat idling, to the acute frustration and no little embarrassment of all involved.

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Large Hadron Collider To Restart At Half Its Designed Energy

A technician inspects the site of a faulty electrical connection that damaged the LHC in September 2008 (Image: CERN)

From The New Scientist:

The world's most powerful particle smasher will restart in November at just half the energy the machine was designed to reach. But even at this level, the Large Hadron Collider has the potential to uncover exotic new physics, such as signs of hidden extra dimensions, physicists say.

The LHC is a new particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, designed to answer fundamental questions, such as what gives elementary particles their mass, by colliding particles at higher energies than ever achieved in a laboratory before.

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Giant Particle Collider Struggles

Many of the magnets meant to whiz subatomic particles around the 17-mile underground Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.

Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.

Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.

After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.

But soon?

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Large Hadron Collider 'Atom Smasher' Restart Delayed Yet Again

A large dipole magnet is lowered ito the tunnel in April last year marking the end of a crucial phase of the installation of the LHC. CERN/AFP/Getty Images

From The Independent:

Repairs to two small helium leaks in the world's largest atom smasher will delay the restart of the giant machine another month until November, a spokesman for the operator said.

James Gillies said an additional setback to the timing could result if some other problem is found, but the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is taking pains to make sure it avoids another major shutdown like the electrical failure of Sept. 19.

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Big Particle Collider Restart Delayed Till October

Large Hadron Collider

From Yahoo News/AP

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher will likely be fired up again in October after scientists have carried out tests and put in place further safety measures to prevent a repeat of the faults that sidelined the $10 billion machine shortly after startup last year, the operator said Saturday.

The Large Hadron Collider was meant to restart in late September, but that will probably be pushed back two to three weeks, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research said.

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Large Hadron Collider To Start Again, But Costs Rise In Race To Discover 'God Particle'

From The Telegraph:

The Large Hadron Collider is to be run flat out throughout the year in order to make up for lost time and to beat an American rival to finding the elusive Higgs Boson – known as the "God Particle".

The £4bn particle accelerator, which broke down last year, was to be turned off in winter to reduce energy demands during peak electricity prices.

But the delays and the news that a smaller less powerful accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois is closing in on the particle has meant it will continue running throughout the year – at an extra cost of £13 million.

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Big Particle Collider To Restart In September

CERN Large Hadron Collider: Photo from Curious Cat

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA – Additional safety features being added to the world's largest atom smasher will postpone its startup until the end of September, a year after the $10 billion machine was sidelined by a simple electrical fault, the operator said Tuesday.

The cost of the repairs and added safety features has yet to be determined, but it will be covered by the regular budget of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, spokeswoman Christine Sutton said.

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Large Hadron Collider To Be Re-Started Later This Year

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The Telegraph:

Scientists are expected to make a decision within days on when the Large Hadron Collider, the broken "Big Bang" machine, will be re-started.

The LHC suffered a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on last September amid a fanfare of publicity.

Officials and scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the £4billion device, have been in talks this week about when to re-start it.

They have also discussed what caused the LHC to grind to a halt and how to prevent similar incidents happening in the future.

CERN have now said that they hope the machine will be up and running in time to deliver the first batch of data for experts to begin experiments by the end of the year.

A final decision on the exact date to switch it back on is expected following a meeting on Monday.

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Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

Photo: March 22, 2007: Magnet core of the largest superconducting solenoid magnet at European Organization for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider. AP

From FOX News:

Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it's finally switched on this summer?

Um, well, you may have a point.

Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.

Rather, Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna in Italy and Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama say mini black holes could exist for much longer — perhaps even more than a second, a relative eternity in particle colliders, where most objects decay much faster.

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How Real Science Works -- A Commentary

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The American Thinker:

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest collaborative scientific effort in history. It involves more than 2000 scientists from 34 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It has taken 14 years to build at a cost of $8 billion and is scheduled to begin serious research work later this year.

And that work is mindboggling. The Collider seeks to accomplish nothing less than giving us a view of what the universe was like about one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang when the 4 fundamental forces in the universe – electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravitation – first split apart. By sending particle beams in opposite directions along a 17 mile underground circular track and accelerating them to near light speed while directing the particles with superconducting magnets to points where they are likely to collide, scientists hope to unravel some of the basic mysteries of the universe. Dark matter, extra dimensions, the nature of gravity, perhaps the fate of the universe itself could be revealed by these collisions and the subatomic particles they leave behind.

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Particle Collider To Restart In Summer Of 2009

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The CBC:

The world's biggest particle collider will resume operation in the summer of 2009 with a new warning system to prevent further breakdowns, its operators said Friday.

The Large Hadron Collider, which lies underground near the Franco-Swiss border, was shut down after nine days of operation on Sept. 19 when the meltdown of a small electrical connection caused the release of a large amount of liquid helium into the 27-kilometre long tunnel that houses the experiment.

The collider's operators, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by the French acronym CERN, released its report Friday on the mishap, confirming that "a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets" was the cause of the initial malfunction.

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The Coolest Machine Ever?

From The Dinocrat:


The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is set to begin operating this year to test the validity and limitations of the Standard Model. (Among the questions: Where has all the anti-matter gone? Does the Higgs boson exist?) The collider is currently being cooled to its operating temperature of 1.9K, which is pretty darn cold. Here are some great pictures from Boston.com of this huge, awesome machine, located in Switzerland and France.



The music video above by science writer Kate McAlpine tries to put the LHC’s mission into layman’s terms. The LHC should be pretty cool — at least if it doesn’t destroy the universe. (HT’s: LGF, LHC Blog)