We’re all waiting for the LHC to restart. Current plans call for collisions later this year, but at lower energies than originally hoped.
Why is it so hard to say for sure? Here’s a nice article in the CERN Bulletin that lays out some of the difficulties.
Due to the huge amount of inter-dependency between different areas of work in the LHC, even a small change can necessitate a complete overhaul of the schedule. For example, something as simple as cleaning a water cooling tower – required regularly by Swiss law to prevent Legionella – has a huge impact on the planning: “When you clean the water tanks it means we don’t have water-cooling for the compressors, that means we can’t run the cryogenics, so the temperature starts to go up,” explains Myers. “If a sector gets above 100 K, then the expansion effects of heating can cause problems, and we could have to replace parts.”
That may be cold comfort (get it? cold comfort!), but it’s the real world. I have no strong opinions about the job CERN is doing, except to recognize that this is the most complicated machine ever built, so patience is probably called for. The particles and interactions are going to be the same next year as they were last year. (Or if they’re not, that would be even more interesting.)
August 24th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I wish all the accelerator experts at CERN the best of luck!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Hey, Sean, all the *easy* experiments have been done!
August 24th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Second-most complicated.
The most complicated is the internet, if you view it as a single thing. Biggest, too.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:58 am
…but, but, but-but routine maintenance of cooling towers becomes critical path? Does this imply that a rusty fan bearing could be a single point of failure and halt operations or worse? How about adding a spare?
Maybe they are so enamored with the complexity they ignored the boring parts.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:10 am
“The particles and interactions are going to be the same next year as they were last year. (Or if they’re not, that would be even more interesting.)”
Interesting point. Of course, when you are proposing to build a thing like the LHC, you need to argue “now is the time to do this thing I want you to spend money on.” The argument is usually based on the state of our understanding in the field and how results from “this thing” will interact with data from other things that other people are already spending money on. But the financial crisis of the moment might well provoke the counterargument, “the particles and interactions will be the same in ten years; why do we have to spend money on it now?” And of course, in ten years the same counterargument will be made. So how do you make the case to a society that has other priorities that “this thing should be done now and not later” in a way that doesn’t reduce to “we [physicists] can’t contain our curiosity and would really like this to happen ASAP?”
August 25th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Ah — cold comfort, i get it — hah!!!! hoooowheeeee!!!
Sorry, felt compelled to say that. ;->
To Paul [NB: a cosmologist, but yet HEP-interested, nice to see]: good points, but remember Paul that the SSC would have been built by 2000 or sooner if physicists had had their way — and the LHC too. so yeah, we’re fully constrained by the politics of the world, alas, however badly we want to know something..
August 25th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I am very excited anticipating various possible discoveries and the exploration of terra incognita. I feel as if I have been invited to an excellent restaurant, and someone else is paying. Waiting a few minutes for a table is OK. I appreciate the LHC team’s deliberate pace, emphasizing caution and thoroughness. The LHC will be the World’s only circular collider for a long time, so I am planning to savor.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:24 am
How can a REGULAR thing disrupt a schedule ?? But looking fwd to the work of these fantastic scientists
August 25th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I think they should have build the water tanks on the French side of the border.
August 25th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I would rate the LHC and the space shuttle as fantastic, complicated machines. As such, instant gratification should not be expected. It takes some effort to get all those ducks in order. Not so sure how “complicated” a machine the internet is.
August 25th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
[...] Shared Why Don’t We Know When the LHC Will Restart? [...]
August 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
[...] Shared Why Don’t We Know When the LHC Will Restart? [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 6:28 am
How expensive can a cooling tower be?! Why not have a spare so that they can swap back and forth?
Sheeesh.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:57 pm
If you have two cooling towers, they both need to be cleaned. That was just an example to put in a press release, obviously they have already thought of it, and the schedule reflects it. But it is meant to show how hard it is to include every possible contingency, and have a perfect schedule.
As for the question of why build it now, why not wait… there is another issue, people. If there are no new accelerators or particle experiments for too long, there will be no new grad students, no new postdocs, no new professors, and the knowledge and abilities will evaporate. The US space program, and nuclear weapons programs, are facing the same problem, unless they keep active development going, the talent and abilities get lost.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:42 am
Actually The Internet is not all that complicated. It has comparatively few types of components – it just has a lot of each type. A gallon of water isn’t complicated just because it has a lot of molecules.
A linotype (for those of us old enough to remember) was complicated.