The past 2 weeks have flown by in what seems like a day. Does anyone else have this problem?

First, I went to visit my parents in their new digs. They were on the East Coast and I had been begging them for years to move to California. They finally capitulated - part way - and settled in Colorado….sigh….parents these days, what will they do next? After the visit, I was home for 10 hours (time enough to change the dirty clothes in my suitcase to clean ones) and went to Fermilab for a committee meeting. Upon my return home from that, I have been ear deep in writing sections for the committee report. That finally got finished today and now life can begin again. Whew! The report will be public in about a month and you will read all about it here. Meanwhile, I have 46 hours to prepare for my upcoming trip to Trieste, Italy….

In the meantime, I have missed too many blogging opportunities! I could have told you about:

This is about a week old, but nonetheless worth promoting to the limelight over and over and over again. From the 11 August issue of Science (sorry, you gotta be registered):

In surveys conducted in 2005, people in the United States and 32 European countries were asked whether to respond “true,” “false” or “not sure” to this statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” Here are the results:

Well, at least we beat Turkey. (Actually I would have expected Turkey to do better.)

The study also collected a bunch of other related data. Science reported from the study:

The total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitude toward evolution (using a standardized metric) was nearly twice as much in the United States as in the nine European countries, which indicates that individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views.

and

The evolution issue has been politicized and incorporated into the current partisan division in the United States in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan. In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as a part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in southern and Midwestern states. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of “creation science”.

To all people who are Republican because they are fiscally conservative (a point I can understand), can you please take back control of your party away from these religious zealots! And, if only we could have more science education in our schools….perhaps then we could aim to do better than Cyprus next year.

I woke up this morning to find this:

and it triggered my instinct to kill. I mean, some varmint is eating my food! Can’t get more instinctual than that. Not to mention all the time and investment I have put into nurturing this crop. Not to mention that my very first BIG juicy tomato was just about ripe enough to pick…

After a thorough debate and inspection of the photos, the concensus of the SLAC theory group is squirrels, rats, or birds. Keeping in mind that my tomatoes are in container pots, on my deck, about 30-40 feet off the ground, rabbits were immediately excluded. I have ruled out birds after a detailed investigation of the crime scene this evening. Burton Richter himself (Nobel prize winner and co-discoverer of charm and former director of SLAC) made a point of calling his wife - an expert on such things - in order to determine the origin of the varmit. Mrs. Richter suggested roof rats. Egads!! I certainly hope not - that sounds rather disgusting and I’d rather have squirrels…

Meanwhile, I have put up every defense possible, short of building a cage for the plants. I might do that this weekend, but since the plants are 6 feet tall, it will be a job. I did some web research and devised a fortified multi-strategy defense. I have purchased Shake-Away Critter-Repellent, it is composed mainly of garlic and fox urine so it is organic, and sprinkled it about. I put out boxes of rat poison and traps, as well as one of those ultra-sonic/EM-wave rodent repellent thingies I had in my garage. I also put out 2 bowls of water (several websites said squirrles eat tomatoes for H2O during a drought - which adequately describes summer in California) and a bowl containing the 7 partially eaten tomatoes from the night before, hoping it might be easier for the varmint to finish them off first. I have also left the lights on, on my deck.

Short of building a cage (or sleeping on the deck with a BB gun) it’s the best I can do….we shall see what has transpired in the morning. If my tomatoes are further eaten by the morning, hell will hath no fury….

Update: It is now Friday. Last night around 1 AM I went out to check on the plants. Sure enough a large juicy (but green) tomato was sitting at the base of the pots. Then there was a rustling noise and a reasonably large RAT (Eeuw!) scurried out of the container pots and ran away. I caught the varmint red-handed! I involuntarily jumped back and screamed (wonder what my neighbors think now), but had no weapon on me so just watched the critter scurry away. (Actually, I don’t have weapons save for a baseball bat or two.) So much for the ultra-sound thingie. I unplugged it and turned on a radio instead for the rest of the night. LaRose Richter gets the prize for the correct hypothesis. Today I took action - the rat control people are coming first thing tomorrow morning, the container with my best plants is now sitting in the middle of my kitchen for the night, and I have about 10 zillion traps surrounding the plants left outdoors….

Update^2: 1:30 AM Saturday. No rat like a dead rat. Yep, my tom-cat snapper trap got’em! Gotta have the right tools for the job.

The team behind the popular science magazine Symmetry is having a workshop at SLAC this week with the purpose of designing a good graphical presentation of the Higgs mechanism and Supersymmetry. People have tried this for years and it’s a tall order. Believe me, I know. But if anyone can pull it off, the Symmetry folks can!

I’ve been enlisted as a technical expert - one not only has to design a good graphic, it also has to bring home a technical point - and be technically correct. I consider this a fun challenge and am asking for you - our CV readers - for help! When designing a graphic to entice the interest of the scientifically interested public (not to mention policy makers), what better than to actually ask that audience what they like? So here we are….

To define a place for us all to get started, I asked David Harris, editor-in-chief of Symmetry, to give the top 4 graphics, each, for Higgs and Supersymmetry that are on the market today. And here they are (note these are a collage of the 4 different graphics):

For Higgs,

and for Supersymmetry,

They can be found at the links higgshere, higgshere, higgshere, higgshere, susyhere, susyhere, susyhere, and susyhere.

Let’s all take a few minutes to look critically at these pictures. Gosh - they are actually pretty bad, aren’t they! To be honest, I was shocked (although I have a slight fondness for the SUSY shadow dancing). The Higgs graphics hit me the hardest - I don’t even get the point in some of them, at least not by just looking at the picture without reading the accompanying commentary. I think we, the collective CV readership, can do much better than this! Don’t you!?!? So this is your challenge: please, spout forth your opinions - what do you like about these graphics? what turns you off? what confuses you? what better ideas do you have?

After the workshop, I’ll post the drafts of the new and improved graphics for further comments… And, don’t be shy now, this is your chance to speak up!

We’ve finished with the World Cup and the big bike race across France. We’re in anticipation for the Fall season of baseball with the playoffs and world series. But, in between, is a lessor known sporting event - the World Series of Poker. The final game will be played Thursday 10 August, and one of the 9 finalists in that game is a genuine particle theorist! It’s Michael Binger who was a graduate student here at SLAC, studying under Stan Brodsky, and defended his thesis just a couple months ago. I was on his committe and can say that he did a fine job. And on Thursday he is playing at the final table at the World Series of Poker. He is coming into the final table ranked 8 out of 9 (apparently 9 people sit at the final table) with a pile of chips worth over $3 million.

This is the World Series of Poker, No-Limit Texas Hold-em Championship. Within poker circles, this is the big event. About 8700 people entered the contest, buying in with $10,000 of tournament chips, each. These 8700 card-playing studs battled it out several weeks until 9 super-players were left. Those 9 will battle it out for the championship on Thursday. And a particle theorist - from Stanford - has amassed over $3 million in chips and thus cracked the top poker playing circle. Eat your heart out Sean!

Michael Binger worked on physical renormalization schemes with applications to grand unification and split supersymmetry here at SLAC under the guidance of Stan Brodsky. Essentially, they have a unique method of describing the running of the strong coupling constant (i.e., how it changes with the energy scale it is being measured at) and found a number of qualitative differences and improvements in precision over conventional approaches when applied to calculations within grand unification theories. It’s interesting work and I’m glad somebody took a look at it.

It seems that Michael is somewhat of a novelty in the poker circles due to his physics PhD. He’s been interviewed and quoted as saying:

Michael Binger hopes to continue doing research in physics without having to run the rat-race of getting a job and impressing all the right people as he puts it. A win here at the World Series of Poker Main Event would definitely give him the freedom to do pretty much anything he wants.

I’ve never followed the world series of poker before, but now I’m rooting for a rising star and a genuinely nice person. GO, BINGER GO!!!

Update: Michael Binger finished in third place! His winnings totalled $4.123 million. He was eliminated in hand #229 at 3 AM PDT, after more than 12 hours of play. He had an Ace-10 suited pair in his hand and with a hand like that he understandably bet the store. For more details on the hand, please see Sean’s comment below (#20). All of us here at SLAC give him our heartiest congratulations!! Rumor has it he will be stopping by on Monday!

This comic is making the blog rounds today (via Clifford via Pharyngula):

In fact, you’ve probably seen it at least 5 times by now! It’s from the xkcd site, which is self-described as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language, written by Randall Munroe, a physicist working at NASA Langley. I’ve just spent some serious time browsing the site and have been laughing hysterically. (In fact, since I’m sitting in my office alone, I think the guys on my floor are now completely convinced that I’m a bit “off,” if they didn’t already know it!) I can’t resist sharing a few more gems from the site (which explicitly states that is ok):

Ok, ok….I’ll stop now….
Continue reading ‘Comic Monday’

The 2006 SLAC Summer Institute has shut its doors and the participants are wending their way back home. I’ve taken off early, am sprawled on the couch, and thought I’d report on the contest before I start my nap.

It’s a Summer Institute tradition to sponsor a contest; we pose a thought-provoking question on the first day, the students have the next two-weeks to ponder the question with deep thoughts and ultimately submit their best answer by the end of the school. We have a lot of fun with the event and it grows more popular each year. Here’s a CV report on last year’s contest. It’s a fun way to get the students to think out of the box.

This year’s question was simply:

What will be the most surprising discovery at the LHC?

in sync with this year’s Institute theme. The contestents were warned that a simple and obvious answer such as “Supersymmetry” would most likely not garner the prize. We had 35 rather diverse entries in the end, which were judged by a panel of distinguished experts.

Unfortunately the most distinguished member, clearly the camel (whose name is Michael Jackson, incidentally), was stuck in Rajasthan and not able to attend the panel meeting.

Some of the entries were quite imaginative! In one, a member of the SLAC theory group conjectured that the most surprising discovery would be the production of Little Green Men. Since this has already been the subject of a light, yet entertaining, novel called Einstein’s Bridge about the cancellation of the Superconducting SuperCollider, the panel thought this entry somewhat lacked in originality. But agreed it would be surprising, particularly if they came to eat us. Condoleezza Rice submitted an entry on her way to the Middle East. Recall that Condi has a long association with Stanford after being on the faculty and serving as Provost and no doubts keeps a keen eye on the SLAC Summer Institute. She proposed the discovery of stable black hole remnants with associated physics indicative of noncommutative spacetime. Now, that would indeed be surprising, but alas did not garner the enthusiasm of the panel. One can only hope she has more luck in the Middle East.

After much debate over a considerable quantity of South African Cabernet, the panel settled on two Honorable Mentions and a Winner. The first Honorable Mention:

An experimentalist will develop a way to test string theory.

Actually the panel was inclined to award this entry first place, but then discovered it was submitted by one of the lecturers. The second Honorable Mention described the production of quasi-stable black holes as a spectacular signature of quantum gravity. And the winning entry is (drum roll, please….)

From the WW scattering cross section, we know that the unitarity of the optical theory breaks down at 1.7 TeV. To prevent this breakdown of unitarity, either the Higgs boson or the Kaluza-Klein gauge bosons (that come from other theories) need to be discovered. The biggest surprise at the LHC (or one of the biggest surprises) would be if neither the Higgs boson nor the KK bosons (nor any of the other particles coming from the other theories) were discovered. The unitarity theorem would break down, thus signaling Quantum Mechanics needs to be overhauled! A more complete theory would need to evolve of which QM would just be an approximation! Maybe something like SuperQM?

The panel thoroughly enjoyed the idea of discovering a Super-Quantum Mechanics at the LHC. Kudos to Jo Ostra from the University of Notre Dame who recieved a bottle of California’s finest sparkling wine and the Institute’s autographed copy of QCD and Collider Physics, donated by James Stirling. I hope she enjoys the wine and the book, but perhaps not necessarily at the same time!

This painting by Dawn Meson depicts Kaluza Klein states from extra dimensions. Dawn Meson lives in the Bay Area and given her name is clearly destined to paint particle physics themes! Several of her paintings adorn the hallways here at SLAC (alas, none on the theory group floor); this one is my favorite.

The 2006 SLAC Summer Institute est arrivé!

This is the 34th SLAC Summer Institute and the topic this year is the physics of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC begins operations next year and we are riding the wave of excitement and expectation as the field gears up to explore the next high energy frontier. Everyone is full of anticipation for the discoveries that are waiting for us at the Terascale, which hold the promise of addressing some of our most basic questions about the nature of matter, space, time, and energy. Anticipated particles such as Higgs bosons are produced in roughly one out of every 10^12 collision events, and hence the analogy of panning for gold.

This topic is also very timely for SLAC; last Friday we were officially admitted into the ATLAS Collaboration! ATLAS is one of the two (high pT) experiments designed to probe the TeV energy scale. SLAC will be one of the tier-2 computing centers in the ATLAS grid and will be a major physics analysis center on the West Coast.

We are in our 3rd day of the Institute and, speaking from an organizors point of view, all is running smoothly (except for the usual MAC-PC issues). We have an exciting program of lectures and topical talks. We opened with an overview of the physics anticipated at the Terascale, expertly given by Guido Altarelli of CERN. We had two lectures on the most important aspect of the LHC: the accelerator! The LHC accelerator is very complex and let’s face it, without a working accelerator, we can’t do our science. This series was given by Lyn Evans of CERN, who is basically the guy in charge of the LHC accelerator complex. James Stirling of Durham, the guy who literally wrote the book on his lecture topic, beautifully explained the theory behind proton proton collisions. Lance Dixon of SLAC will continue on this topic, outlining the details of higher precision calculations. We have a series of detector talks, introduced by Jos Engelen (deputy director of CERN), where we focus on a specific detector component each day. Michael Peskin of SLAC will discuss the connections between colliders and cosmology. And that’s just the first week! Next week, we will separately explore specific physics topics in depth (Higgs, Supersymmetry, top-quark, extra dimensions, etc), taking a look at both theory and how the signatures will actually be observed in the demanding experimental environment at the LHC.

We have a variety of other activities as well. There are 5 afternoons of topical talks, one each on results from the Tevatron, B-physics, astrophysics, neutrinos, and heavy ions. Alternating afternoons we hold discussion sessions where the students get to grill the lecturers. This evening is the first of 2 poster sessions where the students will present their work. Next week is the annual SLAC versus Summer Institute soccer game. And we have 3 dinners which give the students the chance to mingle with each other and the lecturers and drink good wine. Last night was Hawaiian night, unfortunately SLAC’s resident hula dancer had broken her ankle and could not perform.

Over 200 participants have registered and seem to be enjoying the school so far. We are one of five LHC-themed summer schools this year (Fermilab, TRIUMF, Warsaw, and Trieste being the other 4) and we thank our participants for coming to the SLAC Summer Institute!

As Sean has just reported, Ben Barres, a tenured professor in neurobiology at Stanford, is speaking out about his experiences as a scientist. His story is an interesting one and, in my book at least, there’s enough material for a second post.

There has been much recent discussion on the cause of the dearth of women working in the sciences. One hypothesis is that there is a systemic bias against women in the system. Barres has performed the ultimate experiment to test this hypothesis by starting life and her career as female, undergoing a transgender process, and continuing life and his career as a male. Same person, same innate scientific abilities, with observations and experiences from both sides of the fence. One couldn’t ask for a better experiment in a controlled laboratory environment! The only systematic error introduced into the process is that scientific acceptance and recognition takes time to establish and can come more easily to a more senior scientist. Provided, of course, that their early work was any good.

Barres has described his experiences in a recent Nature article (subscription required unfortunately), which has been picked up by a horde of newspapers. The summary is that doors and acceptance she never ever knew existed, suddenly opened up to Barres as a male. For some reason, I’m not surprised… I won’t be surprised either if the sun sets in the West tonight. Kudos to Barres for telling his story!

A main focus of the Nature article is a set of action items that Barres suggests to remedy the systemic bias and increase the number of women in the sciences. These are important and are the reason for this second post. They are:

1. Enhance leadership diversity in academic and scientific institutions.
2. Recognize the importance of role models and increase the diversity of faculties.
3. Take the responsibility to speak out against discrimination.
4. Boost the self-confidence of girls.

In my view, this is a great list! Each step is simple enough to inact and from my own experience I can say that they are somewhat lacking and would make a difference. They are not the only positive steps one can take, of course, but they are a good start. It’s time for institutions to tackle these 4 steps in a serious manner.

Lastly, I feel compelled to spout my personal opinion regarding the hypothesis that innate differences exist in the mathematical and scientific abilities between the female and male brains. (Restricting myself to family oriented language here) It is a complete, total, unadulterated, unmitigated, pile of crap. Some will undoubtedly cry out that I am being unscientific by refusing to test a proposed hypothesis. However, from my view, the hypothesis has already been tested and disproved. It’s been proven wrong by the number of successful women scientists working today. The number is not 50%, but in fact, is large enough to be statistically significant. Take a look at the accomplishments of the women who are stubborn enough to have pushed past the systemic bias - women such as Helen Quinn, Sally Dawson, Lisa Randall, Anne Nelson, Young Kee Kim, Vera Luth, Persis Drell, Risa Wechsler, Eva Silverstein, Nan Phinney, Helen Edwards, Elizabeth Simmons, Marcela Carena, Ritchie Patterson, Janet Conrad, Kay Kinoshita, Sau Lan Wu, Angela Olinto, Marjorie Shapiro, Mary Kay Gaillard, and hell, let’s include me too. This is just a random list of women scientists working in the US in HEP that I can think of at the moment, and yet they are all amongst the top in the field. If we are innately inferior, then how come so many of us do so well? What better set of data does one need?

First, I have a confession to make - I just wrote a nice piece, hit the wrong key, and now the entire thing has vanished! Can’t seem to get it back. It’s been one of those days…. So here I go again:

I’m at the summer meeting of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), which gives advice to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation about the US High Energy Physics program. (Yet another panel for me.) Today we had an intermediate report from the Particle Physics Project Priority Panel (known as P5 - I’m on that one too). P5 is charged with creating a roadmap for the funding and construction of future experiments which involve US funds. It is similar to a national program advisory committee.

The full report from P5 will be out in the Fall, but the main points of our deliberations thus far were given publicly today. In short, they are: we recommend (i) the B-Factory at SLAC continue operations until the natural completion of its program at the end of Fiscal Year 2008, (ii) the funding split during the next 5 years between research and development on the International Linear Collider and other new initiatives be 60-40, respectively, and (iii) three new projects begin construction during Fiscal Year 2008 - a smaller scale Dark Energy project (which will demonstrate technology for some larger future experiments) known as the Dark Energy Survey, a medium scale Dark Matter direct detection experiment (known as the 25 kg CDMS), and an accelerator based neutrino oscillation experiment at Fermilab known as Nova. We anticipate that this program will give breadth to the US particle physics program while still focusing on our first priority - the Linear Collider. Details of our plan beyond Fiscal Year 2008 will be given in the Fall.

We had quite a healthy discussion about this interim report today, and HEPAP gave it a thumbs up. The letter transmitted to and approved by HEPAP is given in its entirety (for those who are interested) by:

Continue reading ‘Interim Roadmap Report’

Just heard a rumor at dinner that the main camera on Hubble had a voltage overload a couple days ago and is now off-line. The backup camera system has now been activated. Anyone out there know more about this? Any confirmations or denials or more info?

Well, it seems that World Cup fever is everywhere - even with me a hardcore baseball adict. For the first time, I find myself checking the schedules and the progress. I haven’t graduated to watching the games yet, but I am still following it. Partly because I’m in Germany this week (yet another committee meeting). Today was my day off and I went to Cologne to photograph the cathedral. (It rained. All day. Persistently. All my photos show dreay dull grey skies with a rather dark pollution stained cathedral in the foreground. Ho hum…) But, first thing I noticed upon walking out of the train station is that Brasil was in town! Go Brasil!!! They must have been on their way from Dortmund to Frankfurt. They gotta win - they’ve got the most outrageous fans! (And my pixels didn’t even catch the people with the yellow green & blue hair!)

This was the hot topic at a panel discussion last week at SUSY06. There were two evening panel sessions at the conference, the first was on the Anthropic Principle and was reported on by Clifford. The seond was entitled, “Getting Ready for the LHC” and was infinitely more rancorous than the Anthropic session which was tame by comparison! Who would have guessed that?

The LHC panel members were: Gordy Kane (Michigan), Giacomo Polesello (CERN/Pisa), Maria Spiropulu (CERN), Konstantin Matchev (Florida), Howie Baer (Florida State), Tao Han (Wisconsin), Tilman Plehn (Edinburgh) and Joe Lykken (Fermilab) served as moderator. Each panel member spoke for a few minutes, then the floor was turned over for general discussion. However, Tao Han brought up a push-your-buttons topic during his presentation: he proposed that the LHC data should be made available to the community as maximal openess would only benefit the physics. He admitted that while us non-LHC experimenters could not comprehend the raw data, he proposed that LHC- experimenters store their data in ASCII and make it available to the public. First a gasp and then audible silence swept the audience as this has been a controversial topic for years.

(Off-topic, but I have to mention another statement of Tao Han’s that I really liked. He asked: How are we prepared for the LHC? And then noted that he himself has been working on this physics since 1987 and that after these long yrs, he declared that “I am ready for the LHC!” I could not have empathized more.)

Han’s public data proposal completely dominated the lively and sometimes heated discussion afterwards. Joe Lykken called Maria Spiropulu up to the podium to defend the bastion of the secret data experimental world, noting that the astrophysics community does make its data public (although I could not find a site while looking tonight - anybody know a URL?). Maria stood silent for a minute, then turned directly towards Tao and said a single word: “ASCII?” It brought the house down. Then she started on the usual diatribe on how their data would be useless as us theorists don’t understand the detectors, their data format, blah blah blah. Frankly, I think she (and experimenters in general) misunderstand the point and underestimate us. Tao Han did not ask for raw data - nobody without the proper background or code can comprehend that - he asked for the 4-vectors (the energy and momentum read-outs) in ASCII. In other words, he asked for the data after it had been processed and sifted, and churned into a useable format. It is the form of data that us particle theorists deal with in our Monte Carlo codes and is what the experimenter works with in the end. It is a reasonable request, but not likely to happen.

So, just who “owns” this data anyway? The experimenters feel that they worked hard and suffered to build the detector (and they have indeed), so the data and any discoveries are theirs. But, who came up with the theories that are being tested? Who did the calculations to see what type of machine should be built? Who convinced the politicians to build the machine? And last, but by no means least, who footed the bill to pay for the machine? So who really owns this data and why is it kept under lock and key?

(Photos courtesy of Bob Yen.)

The BIG questions on everyone’s mind are: When will the LHC achieve first collisions, what will be the luminosity (event rate), and what will be the center of mass energy of the first collisions? The LHC Machine Advisory committee met last week at CERN and the representatives of the LHC project gave the current up-to-date answers to those questions. The result? Well, we are all a bit disappointed, but not too much so. We understand that prudence and caution is necessary here as this project is a large extrapolation from present machines. All in all the LHC machine folks have done a great job!

Up to last week, the mantra was that the LHC was turning on (first collisions) on 1 July, 2007 with a center of mass energy of 14 TeV and a significantly lower than design luminosity. We were not concerned about the low luminosity - that is typical when commissioning a new accelerator - and the high energy guaranteed that many Tevatron searches would be eclipsed in just a few weeks of runtime, even at the low luminosity.

Now for the reality check, as presented last week by the LHC project manager Lyn Evans (insert drumroll here): The machine will be closed in August 2007 and first collisions will occur in November 2007 at center of mass energy 1.8 TeV. The same energy as the previous run (known as Run I) at the Tevatron! It seems that this decision is very prudent. In 2007, only a couple sectors of the LHC will be fully commissioned to handle 7 TeV proton beams. The remaining sectors will not be commissioned until early 2008.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Commissioning (starting) new colliders is frought with numerous unintentional aborts of the beam. And when a beam is aborted, it has to go somewhere (it’s called dumping the beam). Hopefully it aborts as planned, otherwise….much energy is dumped somewhere it should not be! At full throttle (7 TeV beams), the energy stored in the LHC beam is 700 MegaJoules, or 10 TeraWatts of power while the beam is dumped. How big is that? Well, 10 TeraWatts is about half of the world’s total instantaneous power output. No wonder the accelerator folks are a bit jittery! They don’t want to dump 10 TeraWatts of beam just anywhere…

Here’s a picture (courtesy of Tom LeCompte) to illustrate this point. The kinetic energy of battleship guns is 300 Megajoules, or just less than half that of the full LHC beam. Now we understand why the machine folks want to be a bit cautious…

The detectors, I am sure, are grateful for this reprieve. They have more time themselves to get ready and need not be quite so concerned about getting their hardware fried during the first collisions. It also provides a neat check in calibrating the detector’s performance given the large amount of literature on hadron collider physics at 1.8 TeV energies. The LHC detectors will be able to amass a good sample of W and Z bosons with which to start their calibration.

The plan is for full commissioning for 7 TeV beams to be completed during the winter 2008 shutdown, with the first physics run at 14 TeV center of mass energy to commence on 1 April 2008. And that’s no joke.

For those interested in the nitty-gritty details, here is the schedule of the magnet installation:

Last beam magnet delivered: October 2006
Last beam magnet tested: December 2006
Last beam magnet installed: March 2007
Machine closed: August 2007
First collisions: November 2007

The full progress of the LHC can be monitored at the LHC Dashboard, which displays the up-to-date status of the delivery and installation of every single machine component. It is great fun to watch! Here is a sample case showing the progress of the dipole cold masses:

We see that they are almost, but not quite, on schedule.

This delay may be frustrating to some, but given how long we have waited for this already it is only a small price to pay (and not at all unusual in commissioning new accelerators). The LHC machine physicists are to be commended in their excellent progress towards bringing this great machine online! The whole world is watching and we can’t wait (but we also don’t want the machine to blow up)!