Large Hadron Collider to Get More Downtime Than Expected

• Author: admin
• Filed under: Tech News
• Date: Nov 30,2008

If you’re worried about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) bringing the world to an end, you can breathe easy for a few more months. The restart of the world’s largest particle accelerator, which was estimated for the spring of 2009, has now been pushed back until late summer.

According to a statement to ZDNet UK, while earlier this month the date had been pushed back from April 2009 to June 2009, it’s going back still further. But it could have been worse.

The report indicates that CERN had two plans:

• “Plan A” called for a restart of the experiment in late summer 2009, with the beam energy and intensity limited to minimize the risk of another accident.
• “Plan B” delayed switching on the beam until there had been a complete upgrade to the pressure-relief system, which would mean the LHC would be restarted in 2010 at the earliest.

CERN’s head of communications, James Gillies, confirmed that “Plan A” was now the POR:

“The priority is to get collision data from the experiment. The LHC will run next year.”

The repairs will also cost $21 million, an uncomfortably large sum for a single leak resulting from a poor soldering job.

The huge particle accelerator is located on the Swiss-French border. Those concerned about Apocalyptic scenarios are afraid of the creation of microscopic black holes, or strangelets, or even breaking through into another dimension and unleashing who-knows-what, much like the movie The Mist (pictured above).

Naturally, that’s a science fiction move, but lawsuits and death threats preceded the initial September powering-up of the LHC.