| www.facebook.com ... Spotlight On CERN - The LHC Is Back! Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the worlds most powerful particle accelerator, CERN'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. --- Please SUBSCRIBE to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com --- Its great to see beam circulating in the LHC again, said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. Weve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone were well on the way. The LHC circulated its first beams on 10 September 2008, but suffered a serious malfunction nine days later. A failure in an electrical connection led to serious damage, and CERN has spent over a year repairing and consolidating the machine to ensure that such an incident cannot happen again. The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago, said CERN's Director for Accelerators, Steve Myers. Weve learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. Thats how progress is made. 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 ... |