The LHC is now the most powerful particle accelerator in human history. It has spun up to 1.18TeV per beam, for collisions at 2.36TeV. This is far short of its design capacity of 7TeV, but it’s on its way. Thus far no time travelling birds have come out of the time stream to drop baguettes into any cooling ducts to short out the universe-destroying machine, so obviously this experiment can’t possibly find the Higgs-Boson.
During the holiday break, they’re going to put some emergency protocols through their paces:
Meanwhile, engineers will test the “beam dump” mechanism used if a beam can no longer be properly controlled by the superconducting magnets lining the LHC.
In such a situation, each beam would be steered away from its circular path into a 600-metre-long tunnel, where it would crash into a massive 7-metre-long block of composite graphite lined with stainless steel and concrete. Each dump is designed to absorb 7 TeV – the energy per beam when the LHC is running at full tilt. Should a beam go astray it could smash into and melt the delicate electronics that surround the beam pipe.
Much as I’d love to see what kind of damage a FRICKIN LASER BEAM could wreak, this IS, after all, the most complicated single device we humans have ever created, so I’d rather not end up delaying Science! for another year just because I wanted to see some pretty fireworks. I guess I’ll just settle for watching some Mythbusters instead.
