Latest News from the LHC
The latest press releases from CERN
University of Geneva honours LHC project leader at 450th anniversary ceremony (more...)
The University of Geneva is today holding a ceremony at which honorary degrees will be bestowed on four figures renowned for their activities in bringing nations together, including international collaboration in scientific research at CERN. Honorary degrees, which recognize endeavours in human rights and in fostering dialogue between nations, are being awarded to Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Pascal Lamy and Lyn Evans. Lyn Evans led the project to build the LHC from its inception through to start-up.
Final LHC magnet goes underground, 30 April 2009 (more... )
The 53rd and final replacement magnet for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was lowered into the accelerator's tunnel today, marking the end of repair work above ground following the incident in September last year that brought LHC operations to a halt... The LHC is scheduled to restart in the autumn.
LHC inauguration at CERN, 21 October 2008 (more...)
Swiss President Pascal Couchepin and French Prime Minister François Fillon were joined by science ministers from CERN’s Member States and around the world to inaugurate the Large Hadron Collider as planned on the 21st October 2008.
CERN explains what happened to the LHC and the timetable for repair (more...)
CERN has confirmed that a fault in an electrical connection between two magnets caused the incident on the 19th September, which has temporarily shut down preparation of the LHC for experiments. The fault led to mechanical damage and a release of liquid helium, which contributed to further damage to the affected sub-sector of the machine. All of the safety systems operated as expected and no one was put at risk. CERN has the spares and resources available to complete replacement and repair during the scheduled CERN-wide, maintenance shutdown over winter. Checks and modifications will ensure that similar failures do not occur elsewhere once the LHC restarts in Spring 2009. A detailed technical report is available here. What had been an exceptionally smooth early commissioning phase for the LHC, following first injection of proton beams on the 10th September (more...), was halted by a technical failure on the 19th September (more...). The first few days of commissioning beams in the LHC had encountered some technical problems, which had been resolved (more...). However, the damage caused by failure of an electrical connection (during a test) has required that the affected sector be warmed up for repair.
The LHC Computing GRID launches (more...) The worldwide LHC Computing Grid is an essential element of the LHC project, responsible for the analysis and management of the more than 15 million Gigabytes of data flowing from the LHC every year. The LHC Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centres across a 33 country collaboration. The launch of the LHC project was be covered live by international broadcasters and followed by an audience estimated (unofficially) to be close to 1 billion. UK media organisations were at CERN and at a simultaneous media event in London. BBC Radio 4 devoted a day of programming to the LHC, including covering first injection of beams live on the Today programme. See the BBC website for programming, background etc. Dr Tara Shears talks about some of the scientific questions that the LHC project will help us answer, on the www.labreporter.com website. You can try your hand at running the LHC and interpreting collisions on our simulator at www.particledetectives.net. The extensive preparations for the start of LHC experiments have included exhaustive safety assessments, including the potential risk of creating new particles, black holes etc. The latest risk assessment is available here.
