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Large Hadron Collider staying cool at just a hair above absolute zero temperatures
Ah, Large Hadron Collider, our old frienemy, how close is thy doomsday clock now? Closer than it was last week, naturally, especially now that the temperature in each of its eight sectors has been dropped to 1.9 Kelvin, or -271 degrees Celsius / -456 Fahrenheit, depending on your equivalent measurement of choice. While pretty much lethal for humans, that's still twice as warm as the Boomerang Nebula some 5,000 light years away from our fair planet, making it a veritable vacation spot for those carnivorous inhabitants of the Centaurus constellation (not that they'd really want to make that big of a trek without some sort of pre-planned hotel accommodations, but we digress). The chill is all a part of the massive science experiment's ramp up to its second half of November relaunch -- assuming the personification of Higgs boson doesn't pop in via its proverbial TARDIS equivalent wearing a cape and carrying an anti-LHC particle gun, that is.
Large Hadron Collider to run at half-power until end of 2010
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.
Large Hadron restart delayed again -- you can relax until October
If you were enjoying these warmer months, taking time away from terrestrial black hole spotting due to the continued deactivation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, feel free to extend those summer vacation plans a little bit. The particle crasher and supposed non-threat to life as we know it was previously set to restart in September after some damage put it on the inactive list many moons ago. Now CERN's Head of Communications, James Gillies, is saying that the restart is likely to be smashed back a few more weeks into October, meaning New Englanders might just get in one more leaf peeping season before all we know is mashed into an incomprehensibly small ball of matter from which nothing can escape -- not even Gundam robots. [Via MSNBC]
