- I was visiting CERN on one of their Open Days during the previous shutdown. This is one of the rare occasion where visitors can enter the LHC. I walked for about 500m along the beam which is remarkably small despite all its protection.
Standing inside LHCb (one of the experiments where they track collisions) was one of my most awe-inspiring moments about science and technology. Photos don’t do it justice. It’s a multi-story building underground, but every inch is covered with cables, sensors etc. Seeing it on photos is one thing, standing inside the biggest machine built by humankind is a completely different experience and hard to put into words.
The amount of thinking and planning that went into it is insane. CERN staff is super-friendly and open to talk and explain. If you have the possibility to visit, do it - especially with guided tours and on their annual Open Days.
- I wonder whether the cancellation of the superconducting supercollider was a net positive or negative for science.
If it continued to completion, it would have had almost 3x the beam energy of even the upgraded LHC in 2030 (20TeV vs. 7TeV). But the questions are fundamentally political, not scientific: Would SSC operations and funding have continued through the US economic challenges of 2001, 2008, and 2020?
I could see a timeline in which the SSC got built and discovered the Higgs boson before LHC came online, causing the LHC to be canceled, delayed, and/or starved of funding -- only for the SSC to be shuttered during the "great recession" of 2008 or during any other US Gov't belt tightening exercise. Today we would have neither the SSC nor the LHC.
Or, perhaps SSC would have accelerated other discoveries by 10 to 15 years (SSC go-live was to be in the late-1990's versus LHC's Higgs discovery in 2012).
by brokencode
6 subcomments
- I feel like the title is a little overdramatic.
They’re not saying goodbye to the LHC, they’re upgrading it to have 10x the power.
- I visited CERN last July. Was lucky enough to get into a group tour. The tour guide was a postdoc researcher who said the only times that public tours are allowed to take an elevator down is during long shutdowns. So while they do this work on LHC might be the best time to swing by for a tour (I might even try to return).
Even without the descent, my tour was great with showing the 70 year timeline, historical early particle accelerator equipment, and a cool view of the ATLAS control room. The facility is awe inspiring and a testament to Europe's willingness to make long-term commitments to furthering science research for the public good.
- I worked on a tiny, tiny part of the research for the insertable B layer in ATLAS during long shutdown one as an undergraduate - the 3 year period allowed all the detectors to be upgraded significantly! It will be interesting to see how the current systems are upgraded during this shutdown. Sounds like the ITK for ATLAS is absolutely _insane_ compared to the insertable B layer - 5 billion channels, up from 8 million. I wonder if ITKpix is at all similar to the T3MAPs cmos or FEI4 sensors we worked with…
Edit Looks like it’s very different; and really cool: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2928802/files/ATL-ITK-PROC-2025-0...
- I've read that CERN is storing more than 1 exabyte of collisions data these days (up from 600PB during the last long shutdown https://information-technology.web.cern.ch/sites/default/fil...).
Not too shaby...
- Having done my little contribution to ATLAS TDAQ/HLT in the early 2000's, it is an interesting feeling to see the next steps taking shape.
by kristopolous
2 subcomments
- The typo that sometimes got through in official literature still makes me giggle
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acern.ch+%22large+hard...
by archimedes237
2 subcomments
- Hopefully no sophons appear.
- El Psy Kongroo.
- For anyone interested in doing some very special visits this will be a good timing. Long Shutdowns are the only moments where a lot of usually inaccessible places can be visited.
There should be (not yet officially confirmed) an open days after summer next year, just like there was in 2019. Short time frame but for a few days everything(-ish) is accessible, including going down in the LHC tunnel, but many more crazy places.
In the meantime there are still permanent exhibitions and guided tours for those interested. Come have a look at the cool science (made with your taxes)!
- Too late, damage is already done. We have been on the wrong timeline for years at this point.
- Wow, end of an era. Does this mean the timeline finally goes back to normal? ;)
- The LHC is dead, long live the HiLumi LHC!
by usernamed7
4 subcomments
- I was surprised to see .cern as a TLD - i would not expect it to need a family of websites in the way .gov or .mil do.
by ComputerGuru
2 subcomments
- Am I the only one that feels three/four years is a mighty ambitious timeline for the upgrade? It seems to be a very significant undertaking…
- uh oh... does anybody here have a divergence meter?
- [dead]
- bad timing with the price of RAM and NAND
by servo_sausage
1 subcomments
- The LHC is such a crazy thing; kilometres of strange infrastructure, thousands of people, all for what seems like pure scientific curiosity.
I think only surpassed by the SETI program in terms of doing it because many nerds think it's really cool.
Hacker News