Waiting for the LHC online-again date with bated breath? May want to inhale again
Posted 02.10.2009 at 11:53 am
4 Comments
The Collider
Peter McCready
All those planning for the end of the world in July, rest easy and enjoy the summer.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is delaying the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) startup another two months. According to CERN, the LHC will go live in September and collisions will begin in October.
The collider was first switched on last September and just nine days later, was turned off due to a leak in its liquid-helium plumbing. To make up for missed time, CERN announced it will be running the LHC through the winter. Usually atom-smashers hibernate during the winter, avoiding the peak electricity rates and allowing for maintenance, but the LHC will have only a brief respite: Christmas vacation.
The two month delay in restarting the machine will give engineers time to install warning and protection systems, in hopes of preventing another premature shutdown. The system will include pressure-release valves to stop wide-spread damage should another rupture occur and an early turn-off system that would detect problems and shutdown the machine before major damage could be done.
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Why weren't these safety systems in place before they started it up the first time?
from coral gables, fl
Sabotage! or cocky engineers lol
I think the comparison you apply to people who may or may not have rational reasons to oppose cavalier start of the LHC is impolite. I am not opposed to pursuing the LHC due to religious reasons but reasons that to my knowledge the risks are not balanced with the ability to assure safety.
Why do you persist in labeling those who may have rational scientific based opinions as being from the lunatic fringe? Does that not make you the lunatic?
from coral gables, fl
It's funny how easy it is for the general population to be irrationally frightened. It's easy, if you generally know nothing of the science behind a project like the LHC, to be persuaded that there will be bad effects because of the imagined consequences.
It's almost impossible to un-scare people - it doesn't matter how many scientific studies, as well as colliders that are already running, prove that the danger is fictitious, even imagined danger will strike fear in the public because fear suppresses mind's ability to think logically in regard to death. (These are the same people who would argue for a rational belief in God because the consequences of going to hell outweigh any possible benefit of refusing belief)