14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced today that the shutdown planned for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will indeed stretch for more than a year. Initially, they announced that the particle accelerator would only be closed throughout 2012, but it would appear that the extent of the issues plaguing the most complex scientific machine ever created is larger than first thought. In a surprise announcement however, the CERN group says that all of the accelerators the organization operates will be shutdown throughout 2012.
The new comes unexpectedly for the scientists conducting work at CERN facilities. For them, 2012 will be a “dead” year; at least as far as data collection goes. Hundreds of investigators will be affected by the measure, and all data collection processes taking place at accelerators large and small will cease. Taking advantage of the decision, American scientists will most likely continue to press the management at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in Illinois, to keep the facility opened for the coming years, rather than shutting it down in 2011, as planned.
The Tevatron – the particle accelerator at Fermilab – is the only machine in the world that can hope to equal at least a small part of the accomplishments possible with the LHC. The real goal of the particle accelerator race is the discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that the Standard Model of Particle Physics predicts lets energy acquire mass. Experts operating the Tevatron are convinced that their machine is capable of finding the Higgs, but say that they need more time to conduct particle collisions, and also to analyze the data they obtained thus far.
The LHC needs to be closed because the impressively-large superconducting magnets that are used to accelerate proton beams are connected in a faulty manner. This means that the complex machine cannot reach its 14 teraelectronvolts (TeV) peak energy without risking another accident such as the one that took place in September 2008. Throughout 2012, the wiring connecting the magnets will receive upgrades, which CERN officials hope will allow the LHC to run at full energy levels starting 2013. At this point, CERN officials estimate that the particle accelerator will remain closed for 15 months, rather than the originally-planned 12, ScienceNow reports.