Science
LHC Restart - Still a Flawed Plan?
Yesterday, the management of the LHC project at CERN announced plans for a restart of the damaged facility later this year. The Geneva press release reads in part:The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
In Chamonix there was consensus among all the technical specialists that the new schedule is tight but realistic.
“The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year.”
But is the schedule they have now the best for the health of the LHC? We raise this question as it was nearly 20 months ago that we wrote this after the previous magnet faux-pas at CERN:
As we wrote a few months ago (yes, the science column has been getting short shift), the catastrophic failure of the 'inner triplets' in a vacuum test in March would likely delay the startup schedule of the LHC. With a press release this past week, CERN has both denied and confirmed our assessment by keeping the originally planned full startup date of May, 2008 but canceling the initial low-energy test run.
“The low-energy run at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,” said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. “We’ll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.”
This seems to us a foolish course of action which only serves to make management look 'effective' by keeping to the original full startup date. However, by tossing out the low-energy warm up run CERN risks finding out about more problems the hard way. Prudence suggests that with a machine this complex and costly, caution should be the order of the day and an abbreviated test run should be scheduled to kick the tires before driving the new Porsche off the dealer's lot.
In fact, the ultimate start date was delayed another four months but our fears were well founded as the near full energy runs last fall resulted in significant damage to the collider and at least a one year delay in real physics being done.
Now, we will readily admit to only one brief course ('foray') in beam physics so we don't portend to be even remotely as knowledgeable as those involved in day to day operation of the LHC. However, common sense tells us that this is an extremely complex machine - both in terms of the number of disparate parts as well as its function - and that it is far better to burn two or three months time doing low energy runs than to just flip the switch on full and cross ones fingers, again. Delays due to mechanical failure are incredibly costly, not just because of money spent on repairs but also from the downtime of hundreds, if not thousands, of physicists and technicians. CERN will have wasted over a year because of the events of last September and another similar delay would be devastating coming at a time of budget constraints due to the ongoing world wide economic recession. Well, we'll cross our fingers for you, but perhaps a good old fashioned spirit cleansing is in order:
