On Friday, CERN Director-General Robert Aymar gave a talk on CERN activities at the 84th Plenary Meeting of the European Committee for Future Accelerators. One major focus of the talk was of course the status of the LHC, and of particular interest are two pictures of the damage done to the accelerator during the incident on September 19. They are the first publicly-available pictures of the damage that I am aware of.
- Agenda of the Meeting (Aymar’s talk is item 5)
- Slides page for the talk (PDF and PPTX) [Accessible again, see updates]
- Direct link to PDF [Accessible again, see updates]
The pictures of the damage are on pages 17 and 18. Page 18 in particular illustrates that the consequences when one of LHC’s multi-ton magnets is shifted by a significant distance.
Many thanks to Director-General Aymar and to CERN for making these updates and pictures available to the public.
Update (5:10PM CET / 11:10AM EST): Access to the talk has been restricted over the past hour or so. I will send an inquiry to the CERN Press Office to ask about this change in access. In the meantime, the pictures from the talk may be seen here and here.
Update (December 4): The slides are publicly accessible again.
Update (December 5): I have received a reply to my inquiry from the Press Office: “Sorry for not replying to your mail about the LHC pictures sooner. I believe that the [Director General] was concerned that the CERN community should receive the news from him before it was made more widely available, that’s why the link to the talk was temporarily restricted. As you’ve noted, it’s now back up, as is a more comprehensive report on the status of the LHC: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR17.08E.html.”
