End of the first run of the Large Hadron Collider

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

On February 14th, at 7:24 PM Geneva time, the last physics proton beams of the first running of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was dumped into large graphite blocks to dissipate its energy. After a number of additional tests to determine some parameters that couldn't be measured with an operating machine, it was shutdown for good at 8:08:31 on February 16th. The 27 km in circumference machine will now be warmed up from near absolute zero to room temperature so work can begin in upgrading the machine. Some 10,000 splices of superconducting wire need to be repaired, and this involves opening up welded steel tubing that runs between the magnets of the machine. Once this is complete, the energy the machine can be operated at will increase from 8 TeV to 14 TeV. It will be a long, nail-biting two years that it will take to complete this work.

Here's a video showing the dumping of the final physics beam, and details of what repairs will be done:

http://cds.cern.ch/record/1516001

In the meantime, there is still much data from the first run to analyze, and new discoveries yet to be made!

[Clarke]

Hurrah!