After doing some more reading, here is what I found from "trusty" sources over the internet.
1) The LHC will completely shut down at the end of 2011 for repairs to its copper sheaths that are a failsafe mechanism designed to take up the
current if one of the magnets in the Large Hadron Collider warms up - an incident known as a "quench". (Source BBC news Wednesday, 10 March 2010)
2) There was an accident in September 2008 that caused one tonne of helium to leak into the tunnel and resulted in a series of "quenches". Engineers
believe the machine is safe to run at 7 trillion electron volts (TeV) but are anxious to avoid another breakdown. This was the official story. But
some people believe that what really happens during the September 2008 accident was in a containment breach. After an artificially created micro black
hole was reported as missing. An unnamed source has suggested that the particle collision test went ahead as planned, and that following the
experiment a number of micro black holes were created. The black holes were in the process of being documented and evaluated, when it was noticed
that one of the micro black holes was missing. Those allegations were evidently dismissed by CERN. So they have taken the decision to run the machine
for 18 to 24 months at half-maximum power before switching it off for a year to carry out improvements to the 27km tunnel.
3) The LHC is built to reach voltage of 14 trillion electron volts, but until the scheduled shut down, it will operate at voltage in the range of 7
TeV which is the half of its capacity. This is three times as powerful as the world’s previous atom-smashing king, Fermilab’s Tevatron.
4) Dr Steve Myers, a CERN scientist, said that the LHC is its own prototype. They are pushing technologies towards their limits.
5) On Marsh 19 the achieve to push the LHC to 3.5 TeV while the previous record was 1.9 TeV on december 2009.
Why are they rushing so much using the LHC knowing that it is not fail safe right now?
Would you take a chance flying a simple airplane knowing that it is half incapacitate?
CERN will shut down the LHC at the end of 2011 for a full year. Do you believe this? That takes us to December 2012 or January 2013. IMO they would
rather not take any chances to be the scapegoat of the December 2012 apocalyptical events that might occur.
Sources:
BBC news
popsci.com
ATS forum
[edit on 20-3-2010 by St-Patrick]
[edit on 20-3-2010 by St-Patrick]
[edit on 20-3-2010 by St-Patrick]