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LHC Successfully Cools To 1.9K In Lead-Up To Restart

Smelly Jeffrey writes "The BBC is reporting that the LHC has had all eight of its sectors cooled to 1.9 Kelvin. Their tagline is that it is now 'colder than deep space,' referring to the CMB. LHC engineers have spent nearly $40,000,000 USD on a new system to prevent the 'quench' condition that caused the LHC to be down for warming, repairs, and re-cooling over the last year. The LHC is now cold enough to begin colliding particles in search of the Higgs Boson. High power collisions won't be started until late December, or perhaps early January. However, a low-power beam through parts of the collider could be tested as early as next week!"

7 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Better double-check... by David+Gould · · Score: 5, Funny

    Has the LHC destroyed the Earth yet?

    NO

    Good. Carry on.

    --
    David Gould
    main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
    1. Re:Better double-check... by Troy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sorry, but my results differ

      http://qntm.org/?board

  2. Re:Cool! by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, we're having a windows 7 party too.

  3. Large Hardon Collider could corrupt civilisation by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Large Hardon Collider is designed to pump various types of hardon up to huge energies before banging them together. However, many concerned citizens without the personal experience or understanding of what hardons do worry at the idea of the large hardons being sucked deep into a black hole.

    The device will push large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they clash and spray matter in all directions. “It’s nothing that cosmic rays don’t do all the time all over the place,” reassured a particularly buff scientist. “It’s perfectly right and natural.”

    Low-energy hardon physics and the temperature dependence of hardon production are well understood, as is the process of a hardon smoothly entering the nucleus. But some question what may happen at greater, hotter energies.

    Church leaders have come out at the device. “They’re the same polarity!” said Pope Palpatine XVI. The Church worries that strange matter may recruit normal matter and turn it strange.

    The Large Hardon Collider was to launch last September, but this has been delayed due to inexplicable and ill-timed failure to get a beam up. “I’m so sorry,” stammered a scientist, “this has never happened to us before.”

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  4. Re:If it's not in operation... by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Then why are they spending all the energy to cool the things two months before it's needed?

    You mean they're spending like there's no tomorrow? Hmmmm.
           

  5. Re:Wrong summary by hezekiah957 · · Score: 5, Funny

    2. Couldn't this say $40,000,000 USD (FORTY MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) to be more dramatic?

    It's European, not Nigerian.

  6. Re:Cool! by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, we're having a windows 7 party too.

    Curse you for killing my "colder than Vista's reception" joke!

    --
    Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.