
LHC damaged -- research to stop for two months - timr
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/E/EU_SWITZERLAND_PARTICLE_COLLIDER?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-09-20-08-18-53
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rms
It could of course be the Higgs Boson itself altering the past and preventing
the LHC from functioning. If the LHC hasn't hit full speed in ~2 years, we
might be looking at the weirdest consequence of physics yet.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/08/11/will-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/08/11/will-
the-lhc%E2%80%99s-future-cancel-out-its-past/)

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pavelludiq
"The authors reason that any accelerator which surpasses a certain threshold
of super-high-energy collisions (thus producing many of these new particles)
will never go into operation because it violates some yet-unknown universal
law. As evidence, they provide the failed Superconducting Super Collider,
which Congress canned in 1993 after spending $2 billion on the project."

Im just going to assume that a system as large and complex as the LHC is just
hard to maintain, thats a much better explanation, because it doesn't involve
too much unprovable assumptions.

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greyman
But it is strange, isn't it? I would not be surprised if they coudn't get LHC
to work in the end. I don't say the reason will be Higgs Boson altering it's
past, though. But considering what this LHC stuff is all about, I wouldn't
rule out unprovable assumptions.

~~~
rw
_I wouldn't rule out unprovable assumptions._

You can't prove them.

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mattmaroon
Cool, now the world won't end until we all get at least a few new episodes of
The Office.

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mlLK
Who needs the Office when we have:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM> ; I know I don't! ;)

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mattmaroon
I stopped finding rap parodies abut nerdy topics funny about 10 years ago. The
Office, on the other hand, never will be cliche.

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Eliezer
You laugh now, but, taking into account the shutdown of the SSC, how many more
failures would have to occur before you started thinking "anthropic
principle"? (I mean this as an exercise in probability theory, not advocating
that the time to start thinking it is now.)

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Herring
A lot more than expected? I don't see how I can compute that without knowing a
lot more about the design. I think it's safe to put an upper limit at 50 yrs
of trying.

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newt0311
Wow. I am amazed. 17 miles of tunnels and super conducting magnets and only
one section malfunctioned (yet).

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ComputerGuru
More accurately: only one section failed in the couple of days that passed
since the test run.

Prior to the test run the LHC has been continuously delayed to problems and
component failures.

