Interesting to see the LHC is back up and running in Switzerland. There was furore last time it was started, unfortunately it was put out of use for a number of months due to an accident. Having just smashed to particles together for the first time yesterday, there seems to be less opinion around the place. We’ll put it down tot he economy and the public sector strike!

Some juicy tidbits on the LHC official site for those who are looking for more knowledge on the issue:

Official site

Cooldown status of the various sections. This is amazingly, it gives you an idea of how cool they need the magnets to be, and how long it will take them to reach as close as possible to zero degrees Kelvin. This quote from the RTE site tells us when they expect this to be: “Earlier, physicist Steve Myers said it could take until 2011 for beams of protons to hit top velocity in the €6bn experiment, which involves scientists from dozens of countries.”

Another ~18 months for the magnets to cool down between 1.5 - 2 degrees!!!

Timeline of events so far

We’ll be keeping an eye on developing events here on ScienceBlog as they progress

-Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)