Large Hadron Collider shuts down for two years of upgrades | Hacker News Reader

Large Hadron Collider shuts down for two years of upgrades

arstechnica.com

60 pointssk2code22 comments

While there will naturally be a suspension of data collection, much of the work is around crunching the numbers of the huge amount of data already collected which will continue. Expect further breakthroughs in the next 2 years.

Also, I can highly recommend going on a tour. If you're going to be anywhere near Geneva, book early as they fill up quickly. It's not possible to see the collectors while the LHC is running so this is an opportunity to do so. I went after the last (unscheduled) shutdown - serious tech porn.

I'm booked for a tour in April and had no idea it was scheduled to be shut down. What a stroke of luck! Here's hoping we get a more in-depth look than we would have during normal operation.

In 50 years society will look back on this thing, much like we did with the computers of the 1950s and laugh.

What if we get bored of increasing progress?

That's an interesting idea. What if, culturally, we get tired of rapid change? In many ways, this has happened before. After Zheng He returned with the Chinese trading fleet, a change in leadership caused China to turn back in in itself for centuries. The ships were burned in the docks. After a fashion, the Middle Ages in Europe was step-back from progress for several hundred years. Islamic culture is currently in the middle of an event like this right now. (Yes, controversial. I'd be happy to share my thoughts on why if anyone asks.) Lots of contributing reasons add in to these events, but the net result is the same.

It's not impossible that we could see a regression again that takes a long time to recover from in the future.

Flushing out the standard model is not progress.

Or rather, look back and be amazed at how they did it with such limited technology.

"They ran the LHC on less computing power than your holodeck!"

I don't think computer and collider technology necessarily correlate. The ISR collider was built over 40 years ago. People aren't generating exotic subatomic particles in their backyard quite yet.

It is not an issue really as there was so much data generated. Im sure scientics at cern will have much to to by then.

just for the record, in order to warn any non-western members:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en

to the downvoting mob: care to elaborate your argument?

To start off, the quote above is a fact (according all those, who signed it off -- it is relevant to any operational press release regarding CERN).

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Creation date: 08 Sep 2008 14:46:00 Expiration date: 08 Sep 2013 14:46:00

Might want to update that registration...

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/ is better.

Easy for these sites to say, they're in the universe(s) where the Earth survived (so far).

That is a most impressive machine, and quite sad we won't have data for two years, but I hope that this time it really become possible to reach 14 tev.

Maybe this time they manage to end the world =D

I'd imagine that would solidly prove T.S. Eliot wrong.

There's a lot of data to pick through

>and quite sad we won't have data for two years

Not really. Currently, the LHC produces data at a rate far greater than it can be analyzed. I'm sure that backlog will keep the world's high energy physicists busy for quite some time.

::hug::

everytime I see that name, I mentally transpose the d and the r.

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