March 23, 2010

An earth shattering Ka-Boom

One week from today -- from PhysicsWorld:
LHC physics programme set to launch 30 March
CERN has announced that its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will attempt the first collisions at 7 TeV on Tuesday 30 March � one week today.

Smashing together protons at this energy will set another benchmark for the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator. More significantly, it will mark the beginning of the LHC physics programme, which will test and scrutinize the Standard Model of particle physics.
A comment on just how difficult the fine tuning and adjustment process has been:
"The LHC is not a turnkey machine," said CERN director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer. "The machine is working well, but we're still very much in a commissioning phase and we have to recognize that the first attempt to collide is precisely that. It may take hours or even days to get collisions."

This is a sentiment echoed by CERN's director for accelerators and technology, Steve Myers. "Just lining the beams up is a challenge in itself: it's a bit like firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide halfway."
Good luck on an amazing research project. I wish it had been on our soil -- the supercollider would have been as amazing had funding not been pulled. It was designed to reach 20TeV whereas the LHC is only 7TeV. Posted by DaveH at March 23, 2010 2:05 PM
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