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.
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