http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8556621.stmThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) must close at the end of 2011 for up to a year to address design issues, according to an LHC director.
Dr Steve Myers told BBC News the faults will delay the machine reaching its full potential for two years.
The atom smasher will reach world record collision energies later this month at 7 trillion electron volts.
BBC: LHC to shut down for a year to address design flaws
BBC: LHC to shut down for a year to address design flaws
80beats: Rumors of the LHCs Demise Have Been Exaggerated
Rumors of the LHC’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Discover: 80beats: 2010 March 10
Discover: 80beats: 2010 March 10
It sounded again today like the Large Hadron Collider—previously the victim of technical failure, hackers, and avian sabateurs—was cursed. The BBC reported that the world’s largest particle collider would have to shut down at the end of 2011, possibly for an entire year, to address its mechanical problems, according to LHC director Steven Myers. The report states that the faults will delay the machine reaching its full potential for two years [BBC News].
Just one problem, though: While the information came out as another “LHC is broken” news break, Myers actually put forth the intended schedule more than a month ago. The LHC team announced that it would actually extend the physics run through until December 2011, before shutting the accelerator down for a year. The only real delay here has been to the reporting of the story [The Times]. Brian Cox, one of the project scientists, spent the morning tweeting up a storm in protest to the news handling of what he says is just a scheduled shutdown. (A typical tweet reads: “For the very last time – the #lhc story is a pile of merde, as we say at CERN. Scheduled maintenance stops are not bloody news!”)
The LHC will keep running until late next year at 7 trillion electron volts (TeV), as planned. The engineers will go in after that to carry out the planned maintenance on systems in the tunnel that have proven problematic so far; their improvements should allow the LHC to approach what was the goal from the start, doing physics at 14 TeV. In any case, the machine’s upcoming resting time isn’t an emergency shutdown. Particle accelerators are regularly shut down for re-engineering. They are huge, complex instruments, and it’s just impossible to run them full-time like a domestic boiler [The Times].
Times: BBC's LHC story is a pile of merde, as we say CERN
Brian Cox: BBC's LHC story is "a pile of merde, as we say at CERN"
Times Online - 2010 March 10
Times Online - 2010 March 10
Professor Brian Cox's fantastic BBC series, Wonders of the Solar System, kicked off on Sunday to justified plaudits. It is breathtaking television. But the CERN physicist and former member of D:REAM is much less pleased with the Corporation's coverage this morning of the Large Hadron Collider.
The BBC has reported that the LHC is going to have to be shut down for a year at the end of 2011, to sort out "design faults". This, it says, will mean another delay before it can reach full power.
The story is true enough (though "design faults" is a bit strong), but it isn't really news. CERN has long been planning an engineering refit to the Big Bang machine before ramping it up to 7 TeV, but this was originally scheduled for the coming winter rather than the one after. At the beginning of February, it announced that it would actually extend the physics run through until December 2011, before shutting the accelerator down for a year. The only real delay here has been to the reporting of the story.