THE Large Hadron Collider, the world鈥檚 largest particle smasher, will switch on in May 2008. If nothing else goes wrong, that is.
The LHC is being built at CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland. It was due to start later this year, but mishaps, some of them serious, derailed the plans. In March, the supports for a set of so-called 鈥渋nner triplet鈥� magnets failed during testing. These magnets squeeze the LHC鈥檚 counterrotating proton beams and make them collide at four points along the 27-kilometre tunnel. The damaged set of triplets is being repaired, while the rest are being rejigged in situ.
CERN engineers only recently cooled the first eighth of the LHC鈥檚 ring of superconducting magnets 鈥� about 4500 tonnes of material 鈥� to its operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin. The job 鈥渢ook us a little longer than planned鈥�, says Jos Engelen, CERN鈥檚 chief scientific officer. The remaining magnets have yet to be cooled, and Engelen says that there isn鈥檛 much slack left in the schedule. 鈥淭he engineers call this a success-loaded schedule,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou cannot have any other mishaps.鈥�
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