Large Hadron Collider ready by May 2008
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world's most powerful particle accelerator - will be switched on in May 2008. The announcement was made by Robert Aymar, Director of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the body responsible for building the collider, at a meeting of the CERN Council on 22 June. The installation of the 27 kilometre-circumference tunnel, in which scientists will attempt to reproduce the first instances of the Big Bang, suffered some set backs earlier this year. These included the failure of a Fermilab-built 'inner triplet' of superconducting magnets during a routine pressure test in March, and the cooling down of the first sector of the LHC ring, which took longer than foreseen. Due to an accumulation of delays, a scheduled low-energy run, which entails setting up a beam in each direction in the collider, but without particle acceleration, was dropped. 'The low-energy run at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,' said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. 'We'll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.' Over the course of the next 12 months, the operations team will continue with 'cooling and powering' tests on each the collider's sectors. The entire 27-kilometre ring needs to be cooled down to a temperature of -271°C in order for the superconducting magnets that guide and focus the proton beams to remain in a superconductive state. Such a state allows the current to flow without resistance, creating a dense, powerful magnetic field in relatively small magnets. Hardware commissioning will also continue, as will the installation of the large apparatus needed for experiments at the facility. The Council also agreed during their meeting to increase CERN's funding by a total of 240 million Swiss Francs (€145 million) over the next three years (2008 to 2011), in order to implement the body's 'European strategy for particle physics'. 'This is an important vote for the future of particle physics in Europe,' said Mr Aymar, 'it allows us to consolidate the laboratory's infrastructure, prepare for future upgrades of the LHC and to re-launch a programme of R&D [research and development] for the long-term future.'
Countries
Switzerland