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Comment by fh973 | Hacker News Reader

This seems to imply that the LHC has done it's job? Would it be switched off in the foreseeable future? Does the CERN run other instruments or is its existence tied to the LHC?

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CERN has been around since 1954. Among other incredible nuclear science earning several Nobel prizes it also employed Tim Berners Lee when he created what would become the www.

The LHC is but one of CERN’s world changing contributions.

This is the wrong place to get something like this wrong.

This is the wrong place to make an unhelpful comment like this one; Consider reading the HN guidelines on comment quality again, and then maybe share the part of GP's comment you think needs clarifying.

Naw id rather laugh at you and oc.

What am I wrong about? Everything factual I said is backed up here[1]. You can disagree with my opinion that the science is great, but it’s arguably impossible to be wrong on a purely subjective opinion.

As you said: this is the wrong place to get something like this wrong.

1. https://public-archive.web.cern.ch/en/About/History-en.html

This is the long term schedule for LHC [1] where you can get an idea about the plans for runs, maintainace and upgrades. The current plan is to run with HL-LHC (High Luminosity LHC) starting from Run 4 (2030) until Run 6 (2041). These plans will probably be extended because of different factors, but this gives the overall plan for LHC. And also why we start thinking about the next collider because it will take decades to be designed, build, commissioned and tested. This will require huge amount of efforts, community built and collaboration on a global scale.

[1] https://lhc-commissioning.web.cern.ch/schedule/LHC-long-term...

Indeed. A working group suggested the specs for what would become LHC back in 1987, and R&D for the magnets had started the year before. So 21 years before they first fired up the LHC in 2008.

Keep in mind that the LHC would the existing tunnels from LEP, this new one will require a lot of drilling, so planning would have to start earlier relative to startup I imagine.

[1]: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2014...

Not quite. We’re currently preparing for phase 2 of the LHC with increased beam intensities and therefore increased collected date.

From a computing point of view, this poses lots of fun challenges!

The current plan I believe is to run LHC and the experiments until the end of the 30s, to maximize return on investment in terms of “data per CHF”.

Aside from that, CERN has other experiments and projects, some are benefitting from LHC and the big experiments, some are connected to the chain of preaccellerators, and some are completely independent.

> This seems to imply that the LHC has done it's job?

If you mean, 'LHC has nothing more to do', where do you see that in the article?

CERN has evolved over the decades, building generation after generation of more powerful accelerators.

The predecessor to LHC was called LEP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positro...

Yes, the LHC has done its job, more or less. Of course there is more utility to be squeezed out of it. But it is also time to consider the next generation.

they have a whole complex of particle accelerators; many of the old ones are feeders into LHC

https://home.web.cern.ch/science/accelerators/accelerator-co...

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