Heuer’s email (mentioned by Steve, so public enough for me…) suprised me in one line:
“The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.”
Finally, at least the possibility is official. Considering that I had never heard management mention a year for first ion collisions, this is music to my (and probably all of my heavy ion friends’) ears.
Of course while the return of the LHC was a forgone conclusion, the details were certainly not — so good news all around!
The Press Release.
And Chamonix.
This bit “This leaves around 100 dipole magnets that we’ll not be able to test until September and a correspondingly small chance that we may find further bad splices that will need to be repaired before operation starts.” is a bit scary but i have faith everything will go well.