The management at CERN has confirmed the restart schedule for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), following the recommendations from last week’s Chamonix workshop.
The new schedule foresees the first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period.
The LHC will then run through to autumn next year (2010), ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
It’s thought that the new schedule is tight but realistic, and CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said, “The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data.”
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