A view of Atlas. Higgs Boson, extra dimensions, dark matter, look here. Photo by Ellen Wallace
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern (European Centre for Nuclear Research) will be switched on this weekend 21-22 November after its year-long repairs. The LHC, the world’s most expensive machine, smashes atoms into each other at very high energies in order to recreate the conditions at the very beginning of the universe. The LHC will start up very slowly at first, probably at no more than 45o GeV, says James Gillies, head of communications. Energy levels will slowly be increased to about 3.5 TeV by mid-January.
GenevaLunch asked Gillies why the LHC, designed to run at 7 TeV, was going to go at only half-steam. He explained that the LHC’s breakdown in September 2008 required a series of careful checks on the machine before it could ramp up to full power.
Repairing the LHC, 100 metres underground, © CERN 2008
A view down into the LHC just weeks before it was sealed off, 2008
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Scientists at Cern (European Laboratory for Nuclear Research) in Geneva announced 6 August that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on in mid-November, following the latest successful series of tests.
The LHC was started up in September 2008, and had to be switched off a week later, due to overheating and extensive damage to some of the magnets.
Cern's LHC, kilometres of tunnels under France and Switzerland
The latest tests involved the superconducting connections between the string of magnets, some of which revealed abnormally high resistance. It was this sudden increase in temperature in September that caused the nitrogen to heat and expand, severely damaging more than 50 magnets, each weighing almost 30 tonnes.
