LHC News

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

That's pretty scary. But for any high power (and LHC is the top of the pyramid as far as power consumption is concerned) loss of juice is a big concern. In my neighborhood, the power lines are underground, so are safe, but the feed line is above ground and has been knocked out 4 times in the last 2 years...

 

[Oxize]

Re: LHC Status

I though the LHC was hermetic closed when they are running the LHC. Not even an insect could penetrate the LHC. Seems some bird found his way down, lol.

But they already at operating temperature again, so they can prepare beam testing again. Though first it was a joke when i heard this.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

If you read the article, the bird hit power lines leading to the LHC, they were not in the tunnel.

 

[Smersh]

Re: LHC Status

LHC "bird-bread" strike ...

The updates are on Twitter.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Re: LHC Status

Some more updates:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulle ... 1074?ln=en

Sounds like they're getting close.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulle ... 1074?ln=en

Particles are smoothly making their way around the 27 km circumference of the LHC. Last weekend (7-8 November), the first bunches of injection energy protons completed their journey (anti-clockwise) through three octants of the LHC’s circumference and were dumped in a collimator just before entering the CMS cavern. The particles produced by the impact of the protons on the tertiary collimators (used to stop the beam) left their tracks in the calorimeters and the muon chambers of the experiment. The more delicate inner detectors were switched off for protection reasons.

Six of the eight sectors of the LHC have now been hardware commissioned to allow the passage of beams at 1.2 TeV. The remaining two (Sectors 3-4 and 8-1) will be powered up in the coming week.

If all goes well, in just over one week from now, the beams could circulate in both pipes of the LHC. The first low-energy collisions should follow shortly after.

 

[tanstaafl76]

Re: LHC Status

Just the pictures of that thing are still mind blowing. Looks like something from a sci-fi movie. Here's to hoping they don't have another immediate meltdown!

 

[Smersh]

Re: LHC Status

Latest tweet:

Hello everybody, this is Antonella tweeting from the CERN CCC. The situation is calm here, beams are not expected before 2 pm. #CERN #LHC

18 minutes ago from HootSuite

http://twitter.com/cern/

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o'clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.

“It’s great to see beam circulating in the LHC again,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We’ve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we’re well on the way.”


Recommissioning the LHC began in the summer, and successive milestones have regularly been passed since then. The LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, or about -271 Celsius, on 8 October. Particles were injected on 23 October, but not circulated. A beam was steered through three octants of the machine on 7 November, and circulating beams have now been re-established. The next important milestone will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now. These will give the experimental collaborations their first collision data, enabling important calibration work to be carried out. This is significant, since up to now, all the data they have recorded comes from cosmic rays. Ramping the beams to high energy will follow in preparation for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) next year.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Re: LHC Status

sounds like more good news - thanks for sharing Wayne.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

And since they don't have Thanksiving in Europe, they'll be working all week

 

[tanstaafl76]

Re: LHC Status

First proton collisions today...

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressRel ... 7.09E.html
Geneva, 23 November 2009. Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” said CERN1Director General Rolf Heuer. “But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimization, followed by LHCb.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

Excellent, thanx for the update!

 

[tanstaafl76]

Re: LHC Status

Cool animation of ALICE: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/en/Chap ... cs-en.html

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Re: LHC Status

Another article on first collisions:

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2009/11/fi ... e_lhc.html

After all the lunchtime excitement surrounding the first circulation of two proton beams, the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will have enjoyed lavish dinners yesterday after their machine had recorded its first collisions by mid afternoon.

Just after noon (Central European Time), CERN confirmed the acceleration of separate beams of protons in opposing directions around the LHC’s 27 km ring.

Announcing the success via a web broadcast, a bunch of CERN officials suggested that the first low energy collisions would be made within the next two weeks.

However, by the late afternoon the partlcle physics laboratory had issued another public announcement that the beams were made to cross at two places around the ring.

What you can see in this picture is an image produced by the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14.22 in the afternoon.

“The tracks we are seeing are beautiful,” said LHCb spokesperson Andrei Golutvin, “we’re all ready for serious data taking in a few days’ time”.

 

[Space_Invaders]

Re: LHC Status

Let's hope they actually discover something, the maintenance costs of this thing are greater than some countries' GDP.

 

[arkady]

Re: LHC Status

Not discovering something would be significant result in itself, as it would force us to reconsider widely accepted theories.

(assuming the darn thing works)

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

AWESOME site to watch all the working of the LHC -LIVE-. This site has tons of links directly into the CERN projects organized for easy use.

http://www.lhcportal.com/

 

[Vax]

Re: LHC Status

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41022

apparently progress is going to be picking up steadily. Worked like a charm. LHC up and running.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LHC Status

Geneva, 30 November 2009. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning. This exceeds the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, which had been held by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider since 2001. It marks another important milestone on the road to first physics at the LHC in 2010.

Next on the schedule is a concentrated commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity before delivering good quantities of collision data to the experiments before Christmas. So far, all the LHC commissioning work has been carried out with a low intensity pilot beam. Higher intensity is needed to provide meaningful proton-proton collision rates. The current commissioning phase aims to make sure that these higher intensities can be safely handled and that stable conditions can be guaranteed for the experiments during collisions. This phase is estimated to take around a week, after which the LHC will be colliding beams for calibration purposes until the end of the year.

First physics at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010, at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam).

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Re: LHC Status

Geneva, 30 November 2009. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning. This exceeds the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, which had been held by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider since 2001. It marks another important milestone on the road to first physics at the LHC in 2010.

Next on the schedule is a concentrated commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity before delivering good quantities of collision data to the experiments before Christmas. So far, all the LHC commissioning work has been carried out with a low intensity pilot beam. Higher intensity is needed to provide meaningful proton-proton collision rates. The current commissioning phase aims to make sure that these higher intensities can be safely handled and that stable conditions can be guaranteed for the experiments during collisions. This phase is estimated to take around a week, after which the LHC will be colliding beams for calibration purposes until the end of the year.

First physics at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010, at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam).

yay!

 

[arkady]

Re: LHC Status

From http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2010/100203.html

News: 3 February 2010

Outcome from Chamonix: Better in the long run

Last week, the Chamonix workshop once again proved its worth as a place where all the stakeholders in the LHC can come together, take difficult decisions and reach a consensus on important issues for the future of particle physics. The most important decision we reached last week is to run the LHC for 18 to 24 months at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam). After that, we’ll go into a long shutdown in which we’ll do all the necessary work to allow us to reach the LHC’s design collision energy of 14 TeV for the next run. This means that when beams go back into the LHC later this month, we’ll be entering the longest phase of accelerator operation in CERN’s history, scheduled to take us into summer or autumn 2011.

What led us to this conclusion? Firstly, the LHC is unlike any previous CERN machine. Because it is a cryogenic facility, each run is accompanied by lengthy cool-down and warm-up phases. For that reason, CERN’s traditional ‘run through summer and shutdown for winter’ operational model had already been brought into question. Furthermore, we’ve known for some time that work is needed to prepare the LHC for running at energies significantly higher than the 7 TeV collision energy we’ve chosen for the first physics run. The latest data show that while we can run the LHC at 7 TeV without risk to the machine, running it at higher energy would require more work in the tunnel. These facts led us to a simple choice: run for a few months now and programme successive short shutdowns to step up in energy, or run for a long time now and schedule a single long shutdown before allowing 14 TeV (7 TeV per beam).

A long run now is the right decision for the LHC and for the experiments. It gives the machine people the time necessary to prepare carefully for the work that’s needed before allowing 14 TeV. And for the experiments, 18 to 24 months will bring enough data across all the potential discovery areas to firmly establish the LHC as the world’s foremost facility for high-energy particle physics.
I’d like to invite you all to the summary of the Chamonix workshop on Friday 5 February at 14:00 in the Main auditorium. See:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=83135

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: LHC Status

For those who can't get enough news from the LHC: The ATLAS Control Room Blog.

 

[Antwerpo]

Re: LHC Status

For those who can't get enough news from the LHC: The ATLAS Control Room Blog.

This article mentions a particle. Could this already be that infamous god particle? I know it's too early to tell what they saw but can the god particle be excluded?

 

[Smersh]

Re: LHC Status

Here's the latest tweet, posted today ...

LHC sets new record – accelerates beams to 3.5 TeV http://bit.ly/dnSY6s