back to article Higgs hunt halts as CERN prepares LHC upgrades

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have identified the Higgs Boson, but CERN knows the instrument can do better and today started the process of shutting down the massive machine, and the organisation's other particle accelerators, for a spot of maintenance. The key work, according to Simon Baird, deputy head of CERN's …

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  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Wow

    How does one give a tune up to a 27 Km particle accelerator?

    Carefully?

    Note the huge amount of data already collected is likely to keep people busy in analysis while this is going on.

  2. Silverburn
    Boffin

    Understatement

    ...the 2008 incident that crashed the facility...

    "Crashed" is a bit of an understatement...how about "catastrophic failure"..? Afterall, crash implies a simple "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" might fix it - the 2008 incident involved replacement of considerable number of physical component and cryogas, and *then* it was "rebooted" then slowly re-frozen.

    1. Ragarath
      Stop

      Re: Understatement

      Well to me "crash" still implies its original meaning, the disk read/write head coming into contact with the platter. So in that case (depending in severity) it is not a simple matter of turn it off and on.

      I assume you mean when a computer freezes through some form of memory conflict or some of the other causes of programs failing to run correctly and maybe freezing the OS with it.

      So a crash is a catastrophic failure. So the article was correct.

    2. hplasm
      Coat

      Re: Understatement

      "Afterall, crash implies a simple "Have you tried turning it off and on again?""

      Not if it's an electric car...

    3. TeeCee Gold badge
      WTF?

      Re: Understatement

      So, next time you "crash" your car into a bridge pillar at 70mph, just turn it (and yourself) off and back on again and then drive away like nothing's happened.

  3. Silverburn
    Thumb Up

    Super Proton Synchrotron

    Over at the Super Proton Synchrotron, meanwhile, 1o0 kilometres of radiation-damaged cables will be replaced

    1. How f*ing cool is the name "Super Proton Synchrotron". Someone at CERN has been watching too many "Gerry Anderson" series...

    2. Radiation damaged cables? How? And why 100km?

    1. richardcox13
      Boffin

      Re: Super Proton Synchrotron

      > Radiation damaged cables? How?

      Read up on synchrotron radiation: when you use an electro-magnetic field to change the direction of charge particles (eg. protons) EM radiation is emitted. At the energy levels of CERN this is hard X-Rays.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wigner effect

    essentially the wires become damaged at the atomic level, resulting in instability when carrying mucho amps.

    this can cause unexpected quenching in SC magnets due to Wigner induced heat release and directly by producing tiny gaps in the superconductors.

    The only fix is to take the wires out and replace them, as there is no way to reverse the damage short of melting down the wires and reforming them..

    1. the-it-slayer
      Pint

      Re: Wigner effect

      The mentioning of the word "wigner" deservers an early Friday pint. Hope they have a quick way of replacing them or they'll have to be a lot of pints consumed. The clever buggers.

      1. Silverburn
        Pint

        Re: Wigner effect

        Mine's a pint of Wigners please.

        In a lead glass, apparently.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Wigner effect

        Wow! I wonder if my friends at the hifi forum have considered this when buying cables?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Re: Wigner effect

      Can't they just turn the amps right up and remelt the cable insitu...

      A bit at a time.....

      Surely - we have the power.

      Satan - "I have never seen a 4 million amp super conductor explode like that.... Far out!

      Lets try the next one!"

  5. Great Bu

    ..single fault in an electrical connection between two adjacent magnets..

    "Some gaffer tape fell off".

    1. Steven Roper
      Joke

      No.

      This is gaffer tape, the magical fix-everything solution you're talking about here. Gaffer tape does not just "fall off."

  6. 0laf
    Boffin

    Ooooh

    I understood nothing of that yet my geek gland still feels overstimulated.

  7. GreyWolf
    Alert

    We should be told...

    the day before they turn it up to full, so we have time to make tin hats for the family, write our wills, and kiss our arses goodbye...

    1. Callam McMillan
      Joke

      Re: We should be told...

      No, the day before they turn it up to full, we should buy shares in whoever their electricity provider is ;)

      1. Nigel 11
        Joke

        Re: We should be told...

        No, the day after they turn it up to full, they should announce that they accidentally destroyed the universe last night, but nobody apart from a few particle physicists actually noticed.

        1. Elmer Phud
          Happy

          Re: We should be told...

          Ah, the old -- 'Level Two' joke

    2. Elmer Phud

      Re: We should be told...

      The month before they turn it up too full we should be marketing aluminium foil hats.

      (and creating the FUD to build the market)

  8. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Not so much "turning it up to 11"

    As being able to turn it past "5"

  9. Rick Brasche

    more power!

    Scotty would approve.

    if it's not running on the edge of failure, it's not trying.

    Oh yeah!

  10. Sam 15

    "Higgs hunt halts"

    If El Reg decides to move into radio, you're going to need specially trained stunt announcers for this stuff.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Particular if Higgs hunt halt is a cunning stunt.

  11. Mr Young
    Thumb Up

    Special machine

    In spite of my liking for giving political types a good kicking this actually seems to be a pretty good example of collaboration! Anyway - what I really want is pics of the dial at 11.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: Special machine

      I hear that Iran has released pictures of a dial that goes up to 12, although most analysts reckon they haven't actually got a synchrotron attached to it.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    just for the record, in order to warn any non-westerners:

    labor prices in different countries

    "The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]

    source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

    ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

    http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en

  13. Dennis Wilson
    Boffin

    Educational

    Whatevere the views are there is one undenyable fact. THE L.H.C. opened the world of physics to the average person on the street. I, and a lot like me never gave phisics a second thought. The hole L.H.C. project instilled interest in a way rarely seen in a boring subject. Even when they got the power supply wrong and blew the L.H.C. up it gained peoples interest in the subject.

    I take my hat off to them

  14. mfritz0
    Alien

    Neutral Currents

    Wake me up when they figure out that all motion in the third dimension is through the Higgs field with the process of neutral currents at the resolution of the Planck's dimension. In other words, all A-toms are replaced from the vacuum (Higgs Field) every Planck dimension and this process is so slow that nothing inside the third dimension can travel faster than light. Haven't worked out all the QED od QCD formulation yet, but I'm working on it.This includes Brownian motion as well. If you could control the Higgs field, theoretically, you could stop time in that field. If you could rearrange the Higgs field, you could travel from point a to point b in one Planck dimension. Some pretty serious stuff.

    1. Harry Kiri

      Re: Neutral Currents

      Well, thats very interesting. Crack on and let me know when you're done.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. neutral currents

    There is the theory which I invented :-) that the effect of Type 2 superconductivity is actually caused by Higgs bosons condensing within the lattice and releasing Cooper pairs.

    This also neatly explains the current sensitivity (critical current) as there are a finite number of condensing Higgs's and when they run out the catalyst goes away and so does the superconductivity.

    Also, moving Higgs bosons around might lead to a way to store energy in the very structure of a material. If you were to have a superconductor layered with a non superconductor then there would be a charge bias but the Higgs field itself would therefore be the (unlimited) energy source.

    Obviously if you drew too much power and/or the whole thing warmed up too much the effect would break so you would need to keep it cold.

    AC/DC 6EQUJ5

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