After the succesfull start on September 10th and some minor issues during the last week the LHC now unfortunately faces it’s first major problem. A “faulty electrical connection between two magnets” in sector 34 seems to be the reason for a possible two months shut down just after the launch. And this now, just at the time I am going down there …
Investigations are still ongoing and the winter shut down is already in question …
Some more details can be found in the official press release.
This weekend, just after the ATLAS Germany meeting, I decided to stay a bit longer in Munich to visit some friends (greets Julia and Christoph), see the city and visit the famous Oktoberfest.
Well … the ATLAS meeting was fine, the meeting of friends was nice, the city was/is okay … just the Oktoberfest turned out to be even more disappointing than expected … just a very big funfair!
Whereas the prices and number of drunk people and the level of drunkenness seems to be connected to this enormous size …
Check it out …
The CERN press release states 10h28 am this morning as the official time for the first LHC beam to make the full turn. Its a big success and the first step towards full operation of the LHC, I guess somewhat next year.
In parallel I was at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Berlin at one of four connected press conferences in Germany that offerer journalists to ask questions about the start-up e.g. to Prof. Dr. Rolf Heuer, the designated general director of CERN.
Also ATLAS made some first measurements with beam on. Some pictures/event displays are linked here:
Some press releases:
Another thing that happened today … the W-Mass paper I worked on along with Esben, Troels and others during my master studies got it’s first citation … woohoo!
Our paper: “Re-evaluation of the LHC potential for the measurement of mW.“
Cited in: “Strange, charm, and bottom flavors in CTEQ global analysis.” by Pavel M. Nadolsky
