The world's highest energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. Officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, had previously planned to run the gargantuan accelerator at 70% of maximum energy this year.
The change raises hopes at the LHC's lower-energy rival, the Tevatron Collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, of being extended through 2012 instead of being shut down next year.
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So, I was thinking, where are the cold alien intelligences who ought to be out there, studying us dispassionately, as if we were microbes...?
Well, what if we accidentally killed them all?
No, really.
Back in late July, I got email from a writer for Physics World magazine (which is sort of the UK equivalent of Physics Today), asking my opinion on a few questions relating to particle physics funding.
Hector writes in and asks about someone from Sheffield in the UK who says that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will create Dark Matter:
LHC Shows the Way workshop: general colloquium reviewing the LHC and the Higgs discovery.
Kyle Cramner from NYU: "We discovered the goddamned particle"
More slow live blog.
Cute opening video of LHC construction.