The price tag for the LHC repairs was in the newspaper. And the official estimate for beam back in the LHC is now “summer” instead of “spring”. I remember the day the accident happened and I heard a rumor that the LHC would be down for 3 months. It seemed too bad to be true. Things have only gotten worse since then as more has been learned about the extent of the damage. It is disappointing, but hopefully at this time next year we will be drowning in data.
In the mean time, people on the detector side are still quite busy. There are plenty of repairs to do, analysis of cosmic ray data, physics studies and software improvements, and getting better prepared for next year’s data. But everyone wishes we had just a little collision data to enjoy during the long winter nights.
Tags: LHC
