Large Hadron Collider to run at half-power until end of 2010
By Donald Melanson 
posted August 7th 2009 12:19PM
posted August 7th 2009 12:19PM
After a series of setbacks, delays, and potential world-ending mishaps, it seems that the scientists at CERN have decided to take it easy with the Large Hadron Collider, and have announced that they plan to operate it at an energy of 3.5 TeV (or trillion electron volts) per beam when they start it up again in November of this year. If that goes well, they'll then cautiously ramp things up to 5 TeV per beam, before starting to shoot for a full 7 TeV per beam by the end of 2010. So, mark your calendars... while you still can.
Haha this exchange is the funniest thing I've seen on Engadget all year!
My electrons are bigger than your electrons.
Yeah, that IS what she said.
Collider? I 'ardly know her!
I'm sorry, Matt, but you failed at detecting innuendo. Seriously, don't tell me that the name of the thing doesn't make you giggle in the slightest. :)
half-power - thats what the illuminati wants you to think?
I want one.
But, does it blend?
Hahaha that was the only comment to make me laugh
7 TeV is still only 5.6 E-7 joules. electron volts are tiiiiiny. (by the way 1 joule is about equal to the potential energy of an apple held a meter off the ground).
er, 3.5 TeV.
Clapping your hands gives off about as much energy as 7TeV
yea so IF this IS up and running at FULL power by then that would mean for 2 years it would be causing all kinds of havoc, then December 2012 it will hit critical mass....and with the planets aligning at that VERY MOMENT, the earth will be bombarded with Solar Flares the likes of which this earth has never seen...
Are you mad at me????
LHC = vaporware
Are they giving one away? Is this a contest?
Delay until Dec 21 2012!
Well the crazy lady on the E & F Train (NYC) says the World is going to end on May 21rst 2011, so we'll see. She better hope this thing "works" for her sake. Or she'll be WRONG!
Does this mean it will turn on at full power on 12/12/12 lol
OH NOES THE BLACK HOLES
*dickpalm*
If being swallowed whole or having my molecules somehow torn asunder by the LHC becomes high on my list of things to worry about, that would be sweet!
Just how freaked out will people get if this thing keeps getting delayed until... oh I dunno, December 2012 maybe?
You're like the ninth person in this thread to post that
I agree David! If this is the headline of my death... "Man dies in black hole..." Nice, way better than what I originally wanted... Man dies in fire saving monkeys at the zoo.
Can't believe people are seriously worried about this thing. Just another yk2 in our midst.
it'll be 2012 by the time this thing is up and running full speed and then it will end us all! gasp! lawl
We get bombarded with micro-black holes every day, so this won't make a difference.
I love the concept of this: build a giant doohickey that makes a situation you can't observe anywhere else, and see what you get.
It fully captures the spirit of science.
"We get bombarded with micro-black holes every day, so this won't make a difference."
Really? Care to present some evidence of that at all? Didn't think so, well never mind you word is good enough.
It also captures the spirit of southern rednecks whose last words are "Hey, come watch this!"
These are the funniest comments I've seen for an engadget article!
So that makes it's "full power debut" in 2012? Hmm. I see a problem here ;)
So this is how 2012 will come to be! LHC will keep pushing this to 2012 and when it finally powers up at its full capacity, there goes the neighborhood!
So I bet it will get pushed back for the full power launch to Dec 25 2012 somehow... haha
And somehow everyone will keep saying The same THING!
Gordon, get away from the beam!
i'm with the 2012 prediction. maybe if it opens up a black hole we can finally get rid of all those dead hookers
So what the hell is this thing anyways?
Swiss cheese.
Who else thinks this thing will continue to have mishaps and complications, and its full operation will continue to be delayed until December 2012?
Okay, so I don't seriously think that, but it does cross my mind.
So, who else thinks this December 2012 thing will be repeated ad infinitum by people who don't bother to read everyone else's post before replying with the same original idea that 15 people before them thought of, only sooner?
Seriously, people. Tinwiki.org, and leave the rest of us alone. Your foil hat is waiting.
Does any really think that the fire extinguisher is going to help if something goes horribly wrong?
"and for your safety from possible black holes, please make sure you know where your nearest fire extinguisher is located!"
Seriously, guys, this is like being worried that the shrink to 22nm die size in semicoductors might "tear, llike, a hole in vibrational space-time phased anti-tchyon reality matrices!!!!!!!" Getting your physics from bad disaster movies, Star Trek parodies and conspiracy theory web sites is a bad idea.
Particle collisions of this power and much, much greater happen at the top of our atmosphere as the solar wind hits it many times every day. The reason we have to build this huge apparatus doen here is that lifting several thousand tons of detectors up to the edge of the atmosphere is impossible.
Besides, I personally think that this kind of belief in humanity's earth-destroying power is hubris. We are not the phenomenal masters of all we survey, striding god-like across our puny world. We're still just scraping along at the beginning. If you detonated every nuclear warhead we've built you'd release less energy than one major volcanic eruption. Our most powerful weapons, detonated at the centre of the earth, would not stop or start it rotating, despite what the movies say - any more than our most powerful hand-held battery-powered fan will stop a hurricane dead. And one particle accelerator, no matter how impressive an engineering feat it is in human terms, is as likely to destroy the world as a drunken bar-brawl in a small village.