In addition to the information contained in Seth’s post, there was another interesting LHC update today at the ATLAS Week. Last week, there was a talk that caused a lot of conversation among the physicists that implied the CERN management was considering the possibility of not having any beam at all in the LHC in 2009. During the talk today, the statement was made that there are definitely no plans being considered to not try for collisions in 2009.
The schedule in this talk calls for the machine to be cold at the end of July. Of course, something could go wrong with the repairs, but every effort is being made to have collisions next year. The collision energy next year would be at a maximum of 10 TeV (14 TeV is the design) and possibly lower.
Some other interesting points in the talk:
- Approximately 100 people from CERN (and contractors) are already working on the repairs.
- 39 dipoles & 14 “short straight sections” in the incident area and in the buffer zone around it will be removed and repaired or replaced. About 20 new dipoles will be installed before the end of the year.
- 12 dipoles and 6 SSSs have already been transported to the surface. The first replacement dipole was transported underground on Saturday. Some neat pictures here.
- Techniques have been developed to spot resistive splices, the original cause of the disaster.
- The anchoring of some of the cryostats will be reinforced, so they wouldn’t be able to move in future incidents.
