LHC portal

Sorry if this is old news here but the BBC are reporting that the LHC will be shut down for a whole year. It will run at half power until 2011 when it will be shut down.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8556621.stm

Sob....

Yep, they need to shut it down and warm up to be able to do repairs/modifications which will allow them to go up to the design energy of 7 TeV per beam. It's been known since they did splice commissioning last year.

At this point (october 23rd), does anyone knows what the plan is for the winter?

On Nov 5th they stop proton physics and switch to heavy Ion physics. Then on 6th Dec they close down for the winter until February. There will be meetings in Evian and Chamonix to thrash out a plan for next year.

The Goal has been set at 1 inverse femtobarn before the major maintenance closure at end of 2012.
A fine overview of the situation http://blog.vixra.org/2010/10/25/lhc-back-with-gusto/

PhilG wrote:On Nov 5th they stop proton physics and switch to heavy Ion physics. Then on 6th Dec they close down for the winter until February. There will be meetings in Evian and Chamonix to thrash out a plan for next year.

Do you know when a definite date for the heavy ion collisions would be available? Because from my understanding, November 6th is only the date when they start the necessary preparations.

The latest planning chart shows ion setup starting on 3rd, 4th or 5th of Novemeber depending on how quickly they can collect pp data. Ion physics is due to run from 11th November until 6th December. Obviously these dates can change depending on how things go.

Harbles wrote:The Goal has been set at 1 inverse femtobarn before the major maintenance closure at end of 2012.
A fine overview of the situation http://blog.vixra.org/2010/10/25/lhc-back-with-gusto/

In short, this says that they might reevaluate the goals in December, but right now the plan is to operate more or less continuously for one more year at this energy, or slightly more energy, if possible (or safe).