LHC restart delayed again until September

Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.

(Credit: Maximilien Brice for CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider could be restarted at the end of September--a year after the world's largest particle accelerator was knocked off line by an electrical malfunction.

LHC operations were suspended last September after a transformer malfunction in its cooling system allowed a helium leak--just nine days after the controversial project became operational. An investigation concluded that the malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets.

As a result, the 53 magnets used to accelerate sub-atomic particles around the machine's 17-mile underground tunnel had to be cleaned or repaired. At the time, the repair costs for the $5 billion LHC were expected to top $16 million.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, the organization that built the LHC, announced Monday that it expects the first beams to begin in September, with the first collisions expected by late October.

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The delay is the latest in a string of restart dates CERN has announced. CERN had originally expected to have the LHC back online at the beginning of April, following CERN's annual maintenance period. But that target was revised last November to June. Later that month, CERN's head of communications, James Gillies, told ZDNet UK that the new plan was to restart the LHC in late summer.

"The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said in a statement. "It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year."

The LHC, located along the French-Swiss border, is designed to smash beams of protons into each other, test fundamental physics theories, and help understand the nature of matter.

[thehog2]

good. The world's in bad enough shape without having little micro black holes and punching holes through false vacuums and obliterating ourselves in the process. ;^)

[Dalkorian]

Bring it, the world needs to be destroyed anyway.
;-)

[gerrrg]

Thank goodness; I didn't want the world to collapse into a black hole before the end of Summer.

[Scarid]

ok why is this like breaking news or something? at least the frenchies will have a black hole to dissappear in next time they run like chickens when someone takes their country.

[rnaoncfixd]

You seem to forget the previous time they helped Americans get a certain someone out of their country.

[Dalkorian]

Spam. Pure and simple. You are the reason the earth needs to be totally destroyed. Turn it on already! Bring it!! Give us the best you got, universe!

[Michichael]

... Not even going to point out the physics of a micro black-hole that make "sucking in the earth" impossible.

Let the people that know what they're doing advance technology so your kids can get on and troll other people in more ways than you ever imagined.

[timber2005]

Yeah you think people might realize that our earth magnets can't reproduce the power of a supernova sun exploding which would actually create a black hole. A nuke is the closest thing we've got to that power, and its 1x10^99th short I'd say.

[11HollyMolly11]

Why nobody was able to find any other civilizations yet ?
- That's because of there are black holes in place of them now.

[holyhope]

people against science worrying about something they have no idea about. This machine is seven orders of magnitude lower than we get naturally from space. We will never get these energies for at least another 500 years. People against science involving themselves just as they always have, whether global warming, or gene splicing, against against against, lower ourselves to pre-human level, for protection against not understanding.

[11HollyMolly11]

That is not answer.
Ok, I will position this question more specific way:

Some paranoic thoughts against colliders

Why nobody was able to find any alien civilizations yet ? - That's because of there are black holes in place of them now.... Why not ?
For every small problem with collider smart scientists say: ohh well, - we didn't account for that small issue.
Keeping things this way, there could appear the moment when there is nobody left to say: ohh, - we didn't account for that small issue.
99% of population are delegating their future and safety to the remaining 1%.
They also hope that this 1% knows all possible consequences. Isn't that scary ?

If present science are so sure about all possible consequences of creating black holes using Large Hadron Collider or any collider that size, than why any expirements needed ?

How people that are not "against science" can guarantee any HollyDolly mother, that she's childs are in safe place, if they are going to create something that they know nothing about ? Especially if this nothing has one way information flow.
Information can enter black hole but can't escape.

[hegwig]

Was there an Andaluvian World? Did they posess a more advanced technology than us? Did they experiment with the unknown?
http://www.legendarytimes.com/index.php?op=page&pid=36
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines

What happens when intense electrical or nuclear energy is released in a hydrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere? Lots of water of course!
CERN needs to be very cautious when experimenting with mathematical and physical unknowns.