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CERN LHC Reaches Its Goals For 2010

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the christmas-break-woohoo dept.

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "The goals for the first run of the most powerful particle collider (and the most energetic storage ring since ISR) were recently surpassing the 10^32 level of luminosity, with a destructive 15 MJ energy per-beam. This is a significant milestone, opening the way to collect more and more data. The current plan is to stop the proton collisions soon, and provide an ion (Pb) beam and conclude this year with a X-mass break. The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data, which is achievable with such beam power. After that, the entire accelerator complex will be shut down for a year, due to budget costs for science in Europe."

3 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. NOT shutting down due to budget cuts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Summary is incorrect. The LHC is NOT shutting down due to budget cuts. It was planned to shut down to accommodate the upgrade to full 7TeV beams. The budget cuts are responsible for shutting down other accelerators (not LHC). If you can even name one of these other minor accelerators, you know more about CERN than I do (and IAAPP).

  2. Re:I haven't been following this. by suso · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have they used the Large Hardon Collider to make a black hole yet?

    There has never been more of a need for the -1 obvious flag.

  3. Re:Shutting down by the_other_chewey · · Score: 5, Informative

    The cost is too high to run next year. That is disappointing.

    Bad reporting. The LHC has scheduled maintenance in 2012.

    However, CERN has more accelerators than just the LHC, and those will
    be shut down due to financial constraints. They don't do much cutting edge
    research anyway, so the science output is largely unaffected.

    Shutting down the LHC for other than technical reasons isn't planned at all.