Slashdot Mirror
CERN Announces Collider Startup Delay
perturbed1 writes "The 142nd session of the CERN Council saw Organizational Director General Robert Aymar announcing a delay in the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The installation will start up in May 2008, taking 'the first steps towards studying physics at a new high-energy frontier.' Such a delay was foreseen due to the quadrupole accident, which we've previously discussed. This gives extra time for Fermilab physicists to try to understand the latest interesting hints of the Higgs boson, as well as give much needed extra-time for the detectors at CERN to get ready for data taking. Given that it will be fall before the LHC detectors take any useful data from collisions at 14TeV, could Fermilab collect enough data for a 5-sigma discovery by then?"
> Given that it will be fall before the LHC detectors take any
> useful data from collisions at 14TeV, could Fermilab collect
> enough data for a 5-sigma discovery by then?"
Who cares? I'm serious. This entire experiment is designed to demonstrate something everyone already agrees we know. This is the same sort of useless activity that monks used to do when debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
What happens if the experiment does work? Absolutely nothing. Well not nothing, everyone will congratulate themselves, throw a Nobel or two, and get their names in the paper. But that's it. We're not _learning_ anything if it comes in as expected.
It only generates useful information if it fails. However, if it does fail, nothing will come of it because the next energy level we'd have to look at is way high. So sorry, we can't build that machine anyway.
Unless someone comes up with a totally new approach that predicts new unseen results that can be found at existing energy levels, this experiment is a massive waste of money. Of course it's not like they have anything else to do, particle physicists aren't exactly in high demand outside the research world.
Maury