Random Walk
Making Book On the LHC
As you no doubt know by now, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is back up and running again at a stable, record-setting collision energy of seven trillion electron volts. The LHC was switched on with great fanfare in September 2008 (see “Beam On!,” E&S 2008, No. 3) and shut down again nine days later due to a faulty electrical connection that led to a massive coolant leak and ultimately damaged 53 of the more than 1,600 superconducting magnets. It took over a year to repair everything, and the LHC was restarted again in November 2009, just in time for the regularly scheduled winter shutdown.
Caltech physics faculty, staff, and students pulled an all-nighter to watch the restart on a live video feed from Geneva, where the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the LHC are located. And it was a long night—after two false starts, the countercirculating proton beams were finally brought into collision just after lunch in Switzerland, which unfortunately translated into 3:58 a.m. our time.
Meanwhile, according to a press release received by this office, a publicly traded Irish online betting firm named Paddy Power is laying odds on what the LHC will discover first. “The mysterious and previously undetectable form of matter known as Dark Matter is the red-hot 11/10 favourite, followed by Black Holes at 8/1 and Dark Energy at 12/1. God remains the 100/1 outsider.”
—DS
