William Atkins
Friday, 20 November 2009 19:25
Science -
Energy
Page 1 of 2
According to latest news from CERN, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are preparing to re-start the gigantic particle accelerator and collider on Saturday, November 20, 2009.
The
LHC Beam Commissioning website states (for Friday, November 20th),
“Cryogenics should be able to give Ops sector 56 and 67 back mid-afternoon. We'll follow this with at few further beam dump tests and then we go for beam early evening.”
The re-start is the first time the LHC has been started since September 2008.
However, that one resulted in serious problems in some electrical connections, which stopped the LCH dead in its tracks.
Eventually, engineers found out that 53 of the 1,624 large superconducting magnets had been damaged from the electrical connector malfunction.
This time, the LHC scientists are expecting to start the collider on Saturday and, then, two weeks later begin colliding protons with an energy level of 3.5 tera-electron volts (TeV, or 3.5 trillion electron volts).
After tests are conducted the level will be increased to 5 TeV per beam.
As per the schedule, near the end of 2010, the LHC will be shut down for awhile so that it can be geared up to its maximum energy level of 7 TeV per beam around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel.
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