Post shutdown things to do

[Xymox]

Now that the LHC has shut down until feb 20th we will need other things to do. There are plenty of things to do too ! I enjoy these times between beams because of all the things I learn.

Watching them do the work during shutdown will be fun. CMS is going to open up the detector to do some internal plumbing work. This involves some disassembly and separation of HUGE parts of the detector. Watching this process will be fun.

Reading up and studying the LHC and detectors is ALWAYS fun and interesting.
The EDMS section is always good for this kind of things.

There are constant seminars daily on a range of subjects. These will keep you up to date on many subjects.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search?ln=en&as=1 ... ERN+Indico

The document server can be sorted to show the most recent stuff added. This has something for everyone somewhere in this list
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search?ln=en&as=1 ... 6+Outreach

You can see whats going on today in meetings and see previous meetings from the "Whats on today" portal link http://indico.cern.ch/categOverview.py?categId=0

Many countless hours of interesting browsing can be had at CERN. I have found my most enjoyable time spent has been when the beams are not running and I can take time and learn about physics and the experiments

If you find interesting things to do to, post them here.

[Xymox]

The last webcasts http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search?cc=Webcast ... sc=1&of=hb

[Xymox]

Reading this technical paper on the LHC is good..

Most likely the single most important read as it covers pretty much everything on the LHC.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-0221 ... 96916a520d

[Xymox]

And if that isn't enough..

Try these

http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.lhc/jinst

or smaller chunks at a chapter at a time

http://jinst.sissa.it/LHC/

[Roshea1956]

If something goes 'amiss' or terribly unforeseen how do they turn it off, and even how would they 'control' the problem? Say some particle(s) or action causes results that oops! not known. How would they handle it? Contain it, stop it from further building, sit down and start working with math, look for the manual, stand and look at each other, hit the red button, run, pray, everyone for themselves, leave last messages, start singing songs, or you have 15 minutes to reach a safe distance warning, what is their strategy?

[JNW]

If something goes 'amiss' or terribly unforeseen how do they turn it off,

The LHC will shut down automatically if any problem is detected. It can also be shut down manually, of course.

you have 15 minutes to reach a safe distance warning, what is their strategy?

Everyone is already a safe distance away whenever the LHC is operating. When part of the LHC exploded back in sept 2008, nobody even heard it. They just saw some red indicators on their computer screens.

[Xymox]

Looks like everybody is back from the holidays and work is resuming on commissioning..



The fun starts again

[March_Hare]

Looks like everybody is back from the holidays and work is resuming on commissioning...

Lovely!!
I see that we got 2 cryo sectors in the green already... now I understand why we got so much snow here in The Netherlands this winter

Oh and A Great 2010 to all you forumers and wonderful people at CERN!!
May you witness many collision events in this year (at ever higher energies) and may you be the first to spot a Higgs, a decayed Black Hole or whatever it is you're looking for! (Nobel prize? Love? Happiness? Life, The Universe and Really Wild Things?)

Ok, here's some (irrelevant) news from me...

Showed my dad (retired theoretical physicist) the forum and several of the CERN status pages on what turned out to be the last evening before the Xmas break at CERN. We saw beams getting loaded by the bucket ... we saw them decay... we wondered how it's possible that one beam decays faster than the other...

...

...a very exciting evening!

(yeah, I know... I'm a bit of a nerdy type of person... sorry... at least I got the reassurance that I'm a lot like my dad in this respect )

Oh and just in case he signed up here: Hi dad!

(Oh and Xymox: good job on the new rules & getting rid of that mobile phone spammer!)

[josch222]

I see that we got 2 cryo sectors in the green already... now I understand why we got so much snow here in The Netherlands this winter

This is OT, but I think the guy who wrote the article in the following link brought
together some nice data and diagrams that explains very well why we have
this weather at the moment:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/ ... -Greenland

[March_Hare]

Interesting read, Josch222. Thanks!

Ok sorry - back to the topic.

[Shadowdraxx]

no need to apologise its semi on topic tbh, i mean heating electrical costs for geneva come into shut downs .

[Stephen]

Is the LHC even working right now? It seems so weird that they will go from not having any beams right now to doing 3.5 TeV collisions in February 20th.

[CharmQuark]

Stephen

At the minute they are in the process of cooling down the magnets there is also some work that needs to be done on them so we can go to 3.5 TeV hope that helped you abit exciting times if i am wrong then i am sure i will be corrected I don't think they are doing collisions on the 20th thats just when the beam is going to be back in thats as far as i know anyways think they will take things slowly

[tswsl1989]

Some sectors have been cooled to let the rest of the Quench Protection System to be commissioned. (Installed, Tested, Safety checked and all that Jazz)
I think they're also re-commissioning some of the power converters for higher currents to allow them to collide up to 3.5TeV

They'll take a while to work up to that energy, then a longer shutdown next winter to commission up to even higher energies