LHC Will Be Shut Down In 2011 Because of "Mistake"

astroengine follows up to a story about the LHC shutting down that seems to have hit all the news replicators today. "It's to be expected when pushing the frontiers of physics, but the LHC's epic 'will it or won't it' saga continues. Due to an unforeseen construction mistake, the LHC will cease experiments for a year (starting around late-2011) so repairs and upgrades can be carried out. For now, accelerated particles will have a maximum energy of 7TeV (half the power of the LHC's design maximum), which is ample for at least 18 months of experiments before shutdown."

Comments

The mayans were right!

[WiglyWorm]

It will be late 2012 before the LHC gets to full power? Hmmmmmmmm.... Awfully forboding to me.

we were asking for it

[Anonymous Coward]

As a physicist, all I can say is we've been asking for this kind of press.

When you hype the bejeezus out of the shiny new multi-billion dollar tool, it's reasonable for the people who paid for it to expect results. It is jarring when people hear for over a decade about the great results that will come out of an experiment, and then later hear that we have to spend ~50% of the time doing maintenance on the equipment, and the first few years just testing it. I know this is the way things work, this is the way my (much, much smaller) experiments work. This is not a complaint about the science, or being careful. This is a complaint about politics, funding structures and a lack of ability across fields to communicate effectively with the general public. We can't keep doing this to ourselves if we want the public to trust us. We have to manage the media better.

To begin with, the great achievement of the LHC *is* the LHC, not the search for the Higgs boson. It's enough that this is the most complicated, impressive, advanced piece of technology on the planet, and that it required input at the cutting edge from nearly every major field of physics. Just like the point of going to the moon was to go to the moon, not to bring back moon rocks.

Re:so sick of this

[earlymon]

for those people (probablly americans) stop critising the LHC becuase its bigger than the accelerator at fermilab. thats like kids arguing over who has a better skateboard.

Yes, it's exactly like that.

You seem to not understand that our TVs, sound systems, sports cars and particle accelerators are simply the adult extensions of our skateboards.

KEEP YOUR OPINION TO YOURSELF.

Why? It's called freedom of speech - perhaps you've heard of it.

You certainly seem to think that you have it, by virtue of the protocols you've issued.

News flash - since the beginning of time people have freely expressed opinion without regard for fact - and this is never more true than when the speaker is convinced that they are expressing facts. Now, I wasn't around at the beginning of time, so far as I recall, but it's my opinion that that behavior has been occurring for at least that long and is therefore neither limited to Americans nor to Fermilab fans.

My other opinion is that you're probably upset that Fermilab isn't in Europe and that you're simply jealous that you're missing out on all the fun.

But you are providing plenty - for me anyway. This snippet is simply priceless:

quite frankly i'm so sick of people critisising the LHC, especially the people at fermilab. firstly most people don;t know a damn thing about particle physics...

Uh - ok - would those be the people at Fermilab that don't know a damn thing?

BTW - my skateboard has something like 300 BHP, a gazillion ft-lbs of torque, and gets 21 miles per gallon when cruising at just over 100 miles per hour, when cruising that way for about 2 to 2.5 hours at a stretch. And as soon as I translate a gazillion ft-lbs into SI, I'll get back to you on what that means - or - I'll just wait for an opinion from Illinois on that.

Meanwhile, in my opinion, this sounds pretty cool:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2010/today10-03-10Column_readmore.html

And almost finally, in my opinion, I deserve extra crunchy mod points just for avoiding the whole bigger vs. keeping it up line of jokes in response to your post (which given that there is NO NEWS in TFA, makes your complaint even funnier).

NOT IMPORTANT

That's the worst sig ever. In my opinion, you should have a higher opinion of yourself, even if that current sig summarizes the opinions in your post perfectly.

I think you should cheer up now and have a fabulous day, but that's just another one of my opinions.