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Hadron Collider Relaunch Delayed
SpuriousLogic writes "There's been another delay in the schedule announced for getting the Large Hadron Collider switched back on — now it's September 2009, a year after it shut down due to a malfunction. Scientists had said they expected the $5.4B machine to be repaired by November 2008, but then pushed the date back to June 2009, before the latest delay."
September 2008? Its 2009 you fucking idiots.
It was only on a few days, and already they've achieved time travel.
I'm used to shoddy posts from kdawson, but I kinda expected him to know which year it is.
Just fyi. And last year was 2008, not 2007.
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SpuriousLogic writes
"There's been another delay in the schedule announced for getting the Large Hadron Collider switched back on -- now it's September 2008, a year after it shut down due to a malfunction. Scientists had said they expected the $5.4B machine to be repaired by November 2007, but then pushed the date back to June 2008, before the latest delay."
technologytimesummarywrongsummary
November 2007 was a bit optimistic, but september 2008 is still a really fast fix!
That entire news item is outdated. :P
The article apparently fails to contain any full dates, and no years.
See? This is why you always have to use four-digit years when specifying any date, even months, otherwise the 'software', *eyes original poster*, gets confused.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Slashdot editors earning their keep...
When are you guys demanding a slice of the government bail-out then?
I can understand the poster making one typo, afterall, 8 IS next to 9, but three typos seems a bit extreme
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
Wow! Looks like it's already working!
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
So this thing is so advanced that it can time travel into the past and delay its own repairs?
I have a sneaking suspicion the repairs won't be done till 2012... :| Making the prophecy come true after all.
TFA actually mentions no years, just "this year" and "last year".
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I'd rather the EU was spending my tax euros on something... like a new generation of nuclear reactors
And don't you suppose the additional knowledge the LHC might provide would help us build better, more efficient reactors?
With an attitude like that, we'd still be using coal to heat our homes. Seriously, the money's already been spent, the staff is already on the payroll. The annual operating costs are a fraction of the construction costs. This being Slashdot, let's use a car analogy - you just bought a brand new Lexus for some serious, serious coin, but on the way home, you got a flat tire. Are you really not going to fix it in the interest of "saving money"?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Congratulations on being the first person to achieve time travel through the Hadron Collider. However, I regreat to inform you that this is old news to us. Maybe another attempt at travelling through space and time is needed?
Whay can't a moderator just delete this outdated news? Is realy Slashdot that unreliable that this mistakes happen and are not moderated?
You fucking idiots, that's a blatant and stupid error in the summary, give this guy some love.
I'm still using coal to heat my home, you insensitive clod!
I already posted this back in November but people called me a troll for it ...
be launched at Year of the Linux Desktop.
...who read it as the Hardon Collider? Shudder.
Actually, a good businessman knows that money spent in the past is gone. There is nothing you can do about that. What happened in the past shouldn't dictate the decisions you are making right now.
If we discovered right now that continuing with the LHC would be fruitless, then we should stop the project and stop spending money on it, regardless of how much it has cost us in the past.
Of course this is not the case, and I agree that not performing research using the LHC would be extremely silly.
err, I meant Collider
I got lung cancer from your coal use, you insensitive clod!
This was the story that was being bounced by those switches...
It would seem that SpuriousLogic didn't actually say that. Not only is there no mention of years in his/her summary, but there are other minor differences. Slashdot editors: putting those little quotation marks around something and attributing it to someone else is fine, just so long as you don't change it.
When Faraday was asked what his findings about induction could possibly be useful for, he replied "Of what use is a child?". The theoretical physics of today is the engineering of tomorrow. Also, it's not just your money, most of the world is contributing to this project, its just located at the old CERN site because its the biggest synchotron structure built to date. Stop being shortsighted.
Someone fix the collider, it's taken out the space time continuum with it.
Is anyone else keeping track of kdawson's fuckups?
They must have, because according to the summary they have started managing the LHC like my Director does: "Your system will be fully operational last week, at the latest!"
Greetings, fellow Berliner! :-)
(it's only the really cheap, really old buildings still heated by coal here)
Sunk costs are not useful in a financial decision. In your analogy, you still need a car to drive, so the cheapest way to achieve that goal is to repair the tire. It has nothing to do with how much you spent on the car.
Here:
'CERN* management today confirmed the restart schedule [translation: announced another delay] for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) resulting from the recommendations from last week's Chamonix workshop. The new schedule foresees [not that you'd want to bet your life on it] first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
'This new schedule represents a delay of six weeks with respect to the previous schedule, which foresaw the LHC "cold [sic?????] at the beginning of July". The cause of this delay is due to several factors such as implementation of a new enhanced protection system for the busbar and magnet splices; installation of new pressure-relief valves to reduce the collateral damage in case of a repeat [explosion] incident; application of more stringent safety constraints [no more drinking contests in the tunnel]; and scheduling constraints associated with helium transfer [because the scientists can't resist making their voices sound funny] and storage.'
Best Slashdot Co
I'm all for moving it to a less controversial, orbital location, but this feature creep is getting ridiculous.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Mod me up if you have the points. Taco *needs* to fire kdawson--things are REALLY sad.
Well, I guess that despite the cost of these repairs, they will be saving money off their electricity bill.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
(yes, I read Blasphemy by Douglas Preston)
it won't start up until 2010. Little-known fact: most particle physicists are Mayan.
This one made me laugh. Honestly.
Listen pal, it ain't as easy as you would think to do things as they are done here. You people keep whining about us not reviewing the submissions before they come in, and so we finally get around to doing it, and you troll about it. So what if it took five months to review the submission? That's a LOT better than not reviewing it at all, right?
Sheesh!
Sad, but evidently true.
I have stopped paying my life insurance already because in a year I may be dead but there will also be no-one left behind to pay out the policy.
Or to receive it for that matter.
Look, we know you make tonnes of money working 30mins a week, but give at least some sense of professional work out of your 150k jobs. :)
Post your articles at 7am after waking up after all the hoockers and cocaine parties.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...honestly....but then they made a racket about needing to be licensed and now I can't fix the frigging tube. In fact, I am unemployed now! Damn socialists!
Joe (the Plumber)
I'd rather the EU was spending my tax euros on something of more immediate consequence - like a new generation of nuclear reactors, or advanced solar power plants
Perhaps you misunderstand the nature of research?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
I knew something bad would happen when I turned that big donkey wheel I found underneath the collider!
'Those are my principles. If you don't like them, well. .
twitter.com/scld
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Funny how when it when on, the stock market fell, maybe they downloaded the stock market list from the future, but didnt tell many people but the govt.
heehheheh
Sell Sell,, print more money, sell.....
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Now let's dispense with your other analogy. I know the (mostly under 30s) posting on Slashdot don't like my argument (troll? I think not) but I have actually had P&L responsibility for some serious manufacturing plant, and I think I know more about this than you do.
Your analogy is completely flawed, because the LHC is nothing like a Lexus. A Lexus is a Toyota with a big price ticket, but we know what it does. You can read how fast it goes, how long it will last, you can test drive it. So it throws a tire. You know how much a new tire costs and it is didly squit compared to the cost of the Lexus.
Now take a realistic analogy. Up till now all anybody has ever built is a small car. Now a load of engineers propose to build a racing truck. It will be larger, faster, heavier and more expensive than anything built to date. They can't actually tell you for certain whether it will work. They roll out the prototype, and it promptly breaks. They tell you it will be easy to fix...months turns into a year and you start to suspect that won't be the end of it. Did it break because the design was flawed? They can't tell you. Will it break again the same way? They can't tell you.
If you were the VP engineering, you'd look at the other projects around that really could do with some attention, and you'd say "Why are we building this thing?"
The argument below about Faraday is equally misguided (incidentally, I was once a member of the RI, and the alternative version of that story is that he told Wellington, asked what use it was "I know not, but I warrant your Government will tax it". Faraday was doing basic research that needed little more than blacksmith skills. If, in the Napoleonic Wars, he had suggested getting the best blacksmiths in England to work on a really big electromagnet, taking years, how far would he have got? Not very.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Well, yeah, but they didn't build the LHC accidentally.
They still need an accelerator bigger than the ones already running for the same reason they did before it broke. Just as someone who, presumably, wasn't driving (or owning) a car by accident when they got a flat tire. And the cheapest way to achieve those goals (better understanding of particle physics) is to fix the LHC.
And anyway, you don't need to drive, you can just walk, or take a bus, or ride a bicycle. Which is the analogous physical alternative to not using the LHC.
"I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself."
you just bought a brand new Lexus for some serious, serious coin, but on the way home, you got a flat tire
You should have bought a Toyota
So in the actual timescales of these things, taking maybe 10 years out to get people working on some stuff we really need - I suggested nuclear and solar power, but I'm sure there are others - is likely to make no difference at all to progress in physics, but could have many benefits in terms of energy security and climate change.
So, you're angry. But which of us is being shortsighted - someone who thinks resources should be deployed to ensure that we have the energy generating capacity to run things like colliders, or someone who thinks that identifying the Higgs Boson will suddenly revolutionise engineering?
As for Faraday - see my reply above.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Well, yeah, but they didn't build the LHC accidentally.
That would have been awesome.
"What's that?"
"Well, I was trying to build a motorcycle, but I ended up with a doomsday device instead."
We _are_ still using coal to heat our homes :)
=( A long long time without process to LHC@Home.
-- Fernando F. Linux User #263682 http://desconstruindo.eng.br
"Lousy Smarch weather..."
Cern had also said new protection systems would be added as part of £14m repairs.
It blamed the shutdown on the failure of a single, badly soldered electrical connection in one of its super-cooled magnet sections.
I wonder if there was a headhunt for the oaf with the soldering iron that cost them £14m ?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Looking at the only useful thing to have come out of the LHC project so far, I predict it's just delays in the production of the video clip for their new rap song.
It's no big deal, sheesh. Just fire up the Small one for now, or put those geeks at "Colliding@Home" to work.
.
.
.
What's that? Really? Oh. Yeah, we'd best fix that then.
It wouldn't be a /. car analogy if it wasn't flawed...
--Coming up with something clever... please wait...
More than 50 years old, and anyway didn't arise from collider research. Try again.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'd rather the EU was spending my tax euros on something of more immediate consequence
Well, on the plus side, if we hadn't given money to CERN, we wouldn't be able to listen to you moaning about them on the web...
like a new generation of nuclear reactors, or advanced solar power plants, both of which would, I imagine, employ the kind of engineers and engineering companies working on the LHC.
People are working on those things too. This isn't some computer game where you only have limited numbers of scientists, and can make one thing go faster by instantly moving your scientists from one job to the other.
IIRC, the costs of the LHC are on the same order as the London 2012 Olympics - shall we cancel that, too? (And how many days in Iraq does it come to?) And the UK's yearly contribution is comparable to the cost of the Royal family.
Nice job only correcting one of them.
Yes, what a pity nobody thought of that.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
How come I posted this on Slashdot?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Not a physicist myself, I am looking forward to some results from that machine. And I am really sorry for the scientist that they cannot play with their new toy. The guys are so curious and I understand how much they want to see what will happen.
Cheers.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Are you kidding? Them puppies are great for cheap manual labor!
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
With 40% -50% of the world's wealth disappearing [so far] in the global financial crisis, limping projects like US space program and the LHC are tempting targets for cuts or elimination.
Large HARDON Collider!
8====================>
All this was discussed back in December. The LHC staff had been arguing over whether to go for a quick fix or a major redesign of the magnet protection systems and liquid helium pressure relief valves, and the new CERN director decided to go for the major redesign. Good move. Otherwise this would probably happen again in the years to come.
It's a big fix. Most of the magnets have to be physically moved along the tunnel to the lift shaft, brought to the surface, overhauled, checked out, and returned to position. Then the entire "commissioning" process, which took months, has to be done over.
The original LHC design goal was that a magnet quench would result in a few hours of shutdown, not a year. It became painfully clear that this hadn't been achieved.
The God particle doesn't want to be found. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
Back off man, I'm a scientist.
the staff is already on the payroll. The annual operating costs are a fraction of the construction costs
ah there is the rub. Is it really a fraction of the cost? Im thinking several hundred people plus copious amounts of helium (not cheap to get in that quantity) and chilling it. Plus on going 'fixes' is not 'cheap'. Probably on the order of millions of dollars a year. I would not be surprised if it is on the order of 40-100 million euros.
Sunk cost vs recurring cost. Every econ major will tell you the biggest is probably the recurring.
Easy way to 'save' yourself money. Find the bills that cost you something every month. I got rid of cable. 'Saving' 600 a year. I can buy 60 DVDs for 600 bucks. Or eat out somewhere nice once a month... It is a cost trade off.
Should they shut down? That is for them to decide. If the costs outweigh the benefits then yeah it should be shut down. At this point that is not totally clear.
And don't you suppose the additional knowledge the LHC might provide would help us build better, more efficient reactors?
To be honest, no not really. We're spending tens of billions of dollars on an accelerator just to be able to access physics at the TeV scale. If we could interact with that phenomena at an everyday practical level, we wouldn't need CERN. Even stepping down a few orders of magnitude, it's not like the Gel-Mann model of quarks and the unified Standard Model from the 60s have any real-world impact.
But is that so bad? Can't we appreciate science, like art, for its own sake? Curiosity is a virtue, no?
The masters above will never let the LHC come to life. Take it from me; I have a direct channel. They are very upset. "Those stupid human nodes in the earth net are over-processing. LHC my foot. Giggerblox, where is Zaphod? I want him to take a trip to earth a century before."
I'm all for the advancement of science by anyone, anywhere, anytime. That being said, now is a great time to ratchet up the use of the Fermilab accelerator and catch those hot-shot know-it-all Continentals ^H^H^H^, er, our fellow scientists while they are flat-footed.
(I'm taking my data from a recently aired Nova covering Fermilab and would welcome any updates on what's going on there at this very moment. The piece closed with a mention of funding cuts which I presume have not been reversed.)
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
OK, 10 years late... but
"This Episode... This Episode.... This Episode..."
Rock music, explosions, Eagle spacecraft spinning, Martin Landau... Barbara Bain....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It failed because of bad soldering? Methinks our lab techs must be moonlighting again...
-- All that's left of me, is slight insanity, whats on the right, I don't know. -- Bob Mould
And this is why "investors" no longer actually invest in anything.
This will on having been the first post, if my calculations will be correct.
There are two theories for why the LHC can never work.
The first is because as soon as they turn it on, it does something bad that destroys the earth and possibly the universe. But the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, so the universe constantly splits and we live on in the branches where the LHC fails to operate due to some coincidence or other.
The second theory is that the LHC will generate Higgs particles in quantity, but due to some unusual quantum properties of such particles, they can't exist. Again we invoke the MWI and find that universes where lots of Higgs particles would be created are suppressed, hence we will never see one, hence the LHC will never work.
Both of these theories are outlandish, but with each LHC delay I am reminded that they are out there. If it never works, maybe we will have to consider whether there is some truth to these bizarre predictions.
Even stepping down a few orders of magnitude, it's not like the Gel-Mann model of quarks and the unified Standard Model from the 60s have any real-world impact.
You are missing the entire point. The Standard Model and quarks have not had practical applications YET. 100 years ago you could have made the exact same argument about quantum mechanics being purely curiosity for its own sake. Our understanding of that has lead to silicon transistors, NMR imaging (MRI), nuclear power etc. Of course it took 50+ years for those applications to appear. Already particle physics has medical applications: use of hadronic showers to kill brain tumours. Who knows what we applications we may find in 100 years for the physics we will discover at the LHC. The only thing for certain is that if we never go out and find that physics we'll never have any applications for it.
They know how afraid people are of black holes, so they're just standing by the Switch-o-Doom and teasing us with when they will turn it on. Either that, or one badly soldered connection actually DID bring down a $5bn machine. I'd hate to be the kid who was responsible for that!
The path to enlightenment is truly through homemade drugs!
Explainable, and yet unlikely when you add them all up, "accidents" and misfortunes will continue until the project is shelved. It's the only way the universe can protect itself from unavoidable back-to-the-past influences that will cause it to re-set due to temporal anomalies. These incidents will gradually become more unlikely from an individual perspective.
Yeah suckers! The year of the LHC is 2008^H^H^H^H2009! Just like I said before...
December 21, 2012.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
I've been really looking forward to Large Hadron Collider Forever since 1996. The first one was excellent...
It's time to kick ass and chew some bubblegum.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A