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June 22, 2007
Particle Collider Said to Fire Up in '08
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:13 p.m. ET
GENEVA (AP) -- The world's biggest particle collider will start up next May,
six months behind schedule because of problems, including the failure of a
key U.S. designed part, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said
Friday.
The Large Hadron Collider, eagerly awaited by scientists hoping it will
reveal new secrets about the makeup of matter, will be inaugurated without
the low-energy run that had been planned for November, said officials at the
organization known by its French acronym CERN.
''We'll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will
commission the machine to full energy in one go,'' said project leader Lyn
Evans.
In the meantime scientists will lower the temperature section by section to
near absolute zero -- colder than outer space -- in the circular accelerator
in a 17-mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The plan is to fire beams of subatomic particles in opposite directions
around the tunnel until they nearly reach the speed of light, then steer
them into each other to force collisions and examine the resulting showers
of matter and energy with the aid of massive, highly sophisticated
detectors.
The low temperatures -- which will make the collider the world's largest
superconducting installation -- will cool the magnets so they can convey
extremely high currents without any loss of energy, enabling them to control
the path of the protons in the beam, which are much heavier than the
electrons used previously.
''The new schedule foresees successively cooling and powering each of the
LHC's sectors in turn this year,'' a CERN statement said. ''Throughout the
winter, hardware commissioning will continue, allowing the LHC to be ready
for high-energy running by the time CERN's accelerators are switched on in
the spring.''
The laboratory will start injecting beams of particles at low energy and
intensity to give operators experience in driving the new machine, it added.
Intensity and energy will then slowly be increased.
''There's no big red button when you're starting up a new accelerator,''
said Evans, ''but we aim to be seeing high energy collisions by the
summer.''
Cooling the first sector of the machine has taken longer than scheduled, but
has allowed the operations team to gain experience that will be applied to
the machine's seven remaining sectors, CERN said.
In March a magnet assembly provided as part of the U.S. contribution broke
in a pressure test. Scientists redesigned the 43-foot magnet, and a repair
is being made, CERN said.
The $1.8 billion collider is replacing a less-powerful model that was
removed from the tunnel in 2000.
The lab's 20 European member countries, as well as observer states like the
United States and Japan, contribute to CERN's annual budget of about $800
million.
CERN also said that its governing council on Friday approved spending an
additional $195 million over the next four years to improve operations and
prepare for upgrades.
About 6,500 scientists from 80 countries -- half the world's researchers
specializing in particle physics -- work at CERN, which became a main focus
for world research into the nature of matter and the origins of the universe
after the
U.S. Congress in 1993 halted construction on the proposed Superconducting
Super Collider in Texas .
Particle Collider Said to Fire Up in '08
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:13 p.m. ET
GENEVA (AP) -- The world's biggest particle collider will start up next May,
six months behind schedule because of problems, including the failure of a
key U.S. designed part, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said
Friday.
The Large Hadron Collider, eagerly awaited by scientists hoping it will
reveal new secrets about the makeup of matter, will be inaugurated without
the low-energy run that had been planned for November, said officials at the
organization known by its French acronym CERN.
''We'll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will
commission the machine to full energy in one go,'' said project leader Lyn
Evans.
In the meantime scientists will lower the temperature section by section to
near absolute zero -- colder than outer space -- in the circular accelerator
in a 17-mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The plan is to fire beams of subatomic particles in opposite directions
around the tunnel until they nearly reach the speed of light, then steer
them into each other to force collisions and examine the resulting showers
of matter and energy with the aid of massive, highly sophisticated
detectors.
The low temperatures -- which will make the collider the world's largest
superconducting installation -- will cool the magnets so they can convey
extremely high currents without any loss of energy, enabling them to control
the path of the protons in the beam, which are much heavier than the
electrons used previously.
''The new schedule foresees successively cooling and powering each of the
LHC's sectors in turn this year,'' a CERN statement said. ''Throughout the
winter, hardware commissioning will continue, allowing the LHC to be ready
for high-energy running by the time CERN's accelerators are switched on in
the spring.''
The laboratory will start injecting beams of particles at low energy and
intensity to give operators experience in driving the new machine, it added.
Intensity and energy will then slowly be increased.
''There's no big red button when you're starting up a new accelerator,''
said Evans, ''but we aim to be seeing high energy collisions by the
summer.''
Cooling the first sector of the machine has taken longer than scheduled, but
has allowed the operations team to gain experience that will be applied to
the machine's seven remaining sectors, CERN said.
In March a magnet assembly provided as part of the U.S. contribution broke
in a pressure test. Scientists redesigned the 43-foot magnet, and a repair
is being made, CERN said.
The $1.8 billion collider is replacing a less-powerful model that was
removed from the tunnel in 2000.
The lab's 20 European member countries, as well as observer states like the
United States and Japan, contribute to CERN's annual budget of about $800
million.
CERN also said that its governing council on Friday approved spending an
additional $195 million over the next four years to improve operations and
prepare for upgrades.
About 6,500 scientists from 80 countries -- half the world's researchers
specializing in particle physics -- work at CERN, which became a main focus
for world research into the nature of matter and the origins of the universe
after the
U.S. Congress in 1993 halted construction on the proposed Superconducting
Super Collider in Texas .
