National Geographic on the Large Hadron Collider

Here is an article by National Geographic on the Large Hadron Collider that is basic enough that I could follow it. National GeographicEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Changed 3 abbreviations to full names.

I'm guessing you intended this for the A Higgs Question topic.Adminnemooseus

If you want to put it somewhere else that's fine with me. I just thought it would be of general interest so the "Coffee House" looked like as good a place as any.This is a lot more basic than the information in that thread.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

I was following this a while back. It was supposed to be operational two years ago but they encountered a host of issues. From what I have read, some in the community are starting to wonder if they can keep it working once it goes online.Lots of parts(especially magnets)kept breaking down during testing. Due to the immense size and energy requirements, it sounds like it is turning out to be more of an operational challenge than expected. The institutions that put money into it are starting to get a bit concerned I think.

I think the delay is only expected to be about one year over all. Did you fall for the April Fools Joke? Sure, there have been delays. Not unexpected when you account for the fact that this is the most complicated machine built in human history. But overall, the cost overruns are far less significant than they were for the canceled Superconducting Super Collider, and the delays will probably end up being much less drastic than they were for the Tevatron collider during its most recent startup. My biggest concern at this point would be in the physics. I think that since most of the physicists who started working on the project years ago came from electron colliders after they shut down, they tended to underestimate how messy proton collisions can be, and put a bit too much faith in their simulations. I am willing to bet it will be years before the higgs is discovered, mostly because it will take everyone that long to really understand the eccentricities of the beam and of their experiments. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking . I’m still hoping the Tevatron will find it first. The institutions putting money into this are very serious about it, even if they are concerned. There's no way the LHC is going to be canceled at this point unless a catastrophe occurs. That's one advantage of European funding agencies. They may have tight budgets, but when they say they're going to fund something, they actually fund it rather than changing their minds two years later.Edited by fgarb, : too->two