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The Large Hadron Collider has been pretty busy lately, probably discovering the Higgs Boson, and definitely not destroying the world and whatnot. It’s probably earned a little time off, right? You bet it has, which is why it’s going down for a two-year nap.
As of Valentines Day, the LHC isn’t running any more tests for a while, and during this downtime, technicians will be skittering all over it, polishing up its fancy bits for the next bouts of testing; not the most relaxing vacation ever. After the rest, the LHC should even be ready to handle collisions of higher power than ever before. The LHC was originally designed with 14TeV (Tera-electron Volts) collisions in mind, but due to some early problems, it’s never managed one more than 8TeV. When it wakes back up from its nap in 2015 however, it should be a little closer to that goal.
And while there won’t be any more new particles discovered by the beast, you can at least rest assured that it won’t usher in the end of the world during its experimental downtime. Sweet dreams, we’ll see you bright and early in 2015. [CERN via Engadget]
Image by Image Editor under Creative Commons license
Can the media PLEASE stop suggesting the LHC could end the world? The theoretical black holes it could create are smaller than the smallest possible length.
Indeed. We should be more worried about headcrabs and vorts instead. The government should issue everyone a crowbar.
Does anyone really believe they’re just doing maintenance? This is when they’re opening up the inter-dimensional portal and letting the Earth be invaded!
I for one would like to welcome our new alien overlords