CERN's LHC Powers Down For Two Years

An anonymous reader writes "Excitement and the media surrounded the Higgs boson particle for weeks when it was discovered in part by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But now, the collider that makes its home with CERN, the famed international organizational that operates the world's largest particle physics laboratory, is powering down. The Higgs boson particle was first discovered by the LHC in 2012. The particle, essentially, interacts with everything that has mass as the objects interact with the all-powerful Higgs field, a concept which, in theory, occupies the entire universe." We covered the repair announcement last month.

Re:TWO years??

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you .. not .. sense... the utter black humor and mockery in my post? 3D printing is great for trinkets made of one material when all you worry about is the shape of the trinket. People don't realize the complexity of even a pair of headphones and all the different materials needed, let alone something as large and complex as the LHC. I'm making fun of the delusional people who think we are weeks away from Star Trek replicators because someone put a glue gun on a stepper motor.

Understandable but still frustrating

[Snotnose]

I've been involved in enough large scale projects to know why you bring up parts, or underpower the system, and run them to see what breaks. And stuff does break, it's the name of the game.

Still, it's pretty frustrating to watch this shut down for 2 years. We'll be getting results from the Pluto probe about the time this thing comes back up.