LHC Powers Up To 4 TeV

An anonymous reader writes "Due to a decision made at Chamonix, the LHC will operate with a 4 TeV beam energy in 2012. This will allow them to collect as much data as possible (15 inverse femtobarns for ATLAS and CMS) before the whole accelerator complex gets shut down for about 20 months to prepare for even higher energies. 'By the time the LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs,' said CERN's Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. 'Either would be a major advance in our exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a new chapter in particle physics.'"

It's almost certainly there

[grimJester]

The bump around 125 is fairly close to a discovery already. The first time they release fully analyzed data at all this year will be enough for a five sigma discovery. After seeing what kind of lag they have between data gathering and release, I'd say the discovery will be announced in August.

Re:Hyperbole

[ThePeices]

Why do we need to know anything to an absolute 100% certainty?
The difference between 99.99999999999% and 100% certainty is not relevant when it comes to believing that something exists.

Re:Hmm

[LanMan04]

Yeah, PER PROTON. Want to read about the "beam dumps" LHC uses to dissipate the beam's energy when they need to remove it from the accelerator ring?

http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm [web.cern.ch]

"Each beam dump absorber consists of a 7m long segmented carbon cylinder of 700mm diameter, contained in a steel cylinder, comprising the dump core (TDE). This is water cooled, and surrounded by about 750 tonnes of concrete and iron shielding. The dump is housed in a dedicated cavern (UD) at the end of the transfer tunnels (TD). "

"The nominal LHC beam contains an unprecedented stored energy of 350 MJ, contained in 2808 bunches with a beam sigma of the order of 0.3 mm."

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Here it is: (http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000570)

----8----
The art of dumping
Say a magnet quenches, too much beam goes off course, or—the most likely yet least dramatic scenario—the beams have lost too many protons during normal collisions and scientists need to load a fresh set. What happens to the old beams? Even at the ends of their usual 10-hour life spans they still hold 200 megajoules of energy that can't be sent just anywhere.

“This beam is not a danger by itself,” Schmidt says, “but the fact that it can deposit its energy in a tenth of a thousandth of a second makes it dangerous to the machine.”

When the time comes, the beams are extracted, or dumped, into two huge cylindrical blocks. Eight meters long, one meter in diameter, and made of graphite composites encased in concrete, they are the only thing that can withstand the full power of the beam. But first the beam has to be diffused, because in its compressed form it would drill a hole tens of meters long in any material.

So as the beams pass out of the LHC, they spread out and hit the blocks in a shape that resembles a cursive “e.” The dump takes just eighty-millionths of a second, dilutes the energy of the beam by a factor of 100,000 and heats the center of the lines that make up the “e” to almost 700C.
----8----

And here is a throughout description of the beam dump interaction (i.e. what happens to whatever the LHC hits with a 7TeV beam):
http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/BeamdumpInteraction.pdf

It will start a nice fire, indeed. Heh. But all that concrete is there because protons scattering when they hit something are really annoying to electronics, and not safe to someone that takes too many of them (by standing just to the side of the beam target).