It is like a fish market in the main control room now. Today, Aug 8, 2008 at 16:40 all the safety interlocks tests in the LHC were completed and the machine was fully closed for the first beam tests. However, it hasn’t without some small hickups, a fire alarm in the pre-injector (PS) and along with some other cabling problems, small panics before the big thing…
It is about 6pm now and they have managed to put the beam through the injector chain and all the way through the transfer line just 15 m before the LHC tunnel where it is stopped. The stopper in the transfer line will be removed shortly (6-8pm). The plan is to then adjust the timing of the injection magnets to put the beam into the LHC and thread the beam thereafter the sector 2-3 before midnight. Slightly optimistic but when you wake up tomorrow could the “first beam in the LHC” already be an old story ?
Tags: first beam, LHC, LHC injection test
