Large Hadron Collider to be shut down for a year, due to mistakes made in construction.

reply to post by boaby_phet


Heh, you took the first swipe of the handbag at dawn

Look boaby_phet, all I'm saying and all I’m trying to put across in my thread is the LHC has wasted money in it's endeavours.. That’s it. There’s no hidden agenda and I have it 100% correct IMO, they have spent money on mistakes that should not have happened if it was commissioned correctly.. so that would = a waste of money, let's agree to disagree on this, all I can say is from the knowledge I’ve gained by following the project (all from the MSM and science articles) it wasn't put together completely correct, it had flaws in it's construction not necessarily in it's design, although getting the wrong spec on the copper sheath didn’t help design wise, now their having to pay millions to correct the construction problems...

yup, some money can maybe be classed as wasted, ironicly as they say by trying to cut costs, as now they have to repair it again..

i dont think its a total waste of money, they have announced the shutdown, but to save wasting money they are going to do experiments that they can at 7Tev, which is not really wasting money, as their making good use of the time and resorces that are avaliable to them.

the big problem when discussing the LHC at our everyday dude level is that i just dont think we can actualy grasp the sheer scale / size / magnatude of the machine, we are used to machines we can at least keep in a garage or shed, the LHC is 15 mils long ! thats pretty immense, it used to take me 25 mins to travel just 20 miles to go to work by train! .. its that big that if a car was to drive round it at 60 mph it would take 20 mins! thats completly stupendous to me... and how much is a car, the real good cars can cost £50000 to £200000 plus, and ther are absolutely tiny compared to the LHC ..

im trailing off a bit now, what im getting at is that its big, really really mind boggolingly big! and thats most likely why everything onvolved in it costs Alot of money and may seem like a waste.

im just thinking cars now,, imagine the LHC tunnel empty, i wonder how much it would cost to completly fill the tunnels with lamborghini murcielago's, and i mean pack them in, not crushed, just in like tetris... i wonder how much that would cost! .... and imagine if they all had a wonkey brake that needed fixed!

i probably was first with the handbag Lol ... it always comes out in the morning!

[edit on 10-3-2010 by boaby_phet]

reply to post by boaby_phet


Ok cool that’s all I need to hear “some money can maybe be classed as wasted” that’s all I’m saying, to be honest I can grasp the sheer scale / size / magnitude of the machine as I work in a 2000MW Power station that’s something like 10 miles square and it works just fine after new experimental plant is installed, heh as for cars filling the LHC tunnels,

Money wasted, I find the comments today laughable. The Hubble space telescope after all upgrades has cost us, well NASA, and the American public (thank you bye the way to my neighbors down south) roughly in the $10 billion dollar range. Many other large scale projects cost in the billions and only help a small few in the population. I live in Vancouver and our Olympic debt when they finally dot all the I's and cross all the T's is going to be roughly the cost of this machine. A machine that is trying to push us through to a fuller understanding of whats going on around us.

Of course all things have growing pains, think if they had never told us what they were up too, until it ran right, and just gave us the bill. Think of the conversation then.

Personally I hope that the math is on, and the ideas are experimented with and they push science further. To find out what we do not know, hence the whole idea of this machine.

But I can easily think of more money wasted just within my own country (Canada) on more frivolous endevours (gun registry, ad scam, winter olympics) as well as many other joint projects around the world that easily shouldn't have even been considered as an expenditure. And yet we would sit here and bicker over a project that true with its faults, may produce science that will bring us forward to a better understanding, as well as the possibility of new energy sources produced.

Truely laughable today.

Think of all the worlds military budgets combined, and tell me we're wasting money on science. The salarys of our politicians and CEO's of our money (the banks) and tell me we're wasting money on science

SaneThinking

Originally posted by Retrovertigo
AFP are now reporting the LHC will be ramped up to 7 TeV in late march or early april...

This conflicts with the BBC report at the start of this thread...

Wonder what the go with this is

What's been overlooked with all these posts thus far is simply that this is 'planned' maintenace & has been for a while. It hasn't suddenly broken down again & stopped working. The LHC is fully operational, they're simply going to make a few tweaks & repairs before going for the full 14 TeV's. Before shutting it down, they are going to for 7 TeV's.

Originally posted by Retrovertigo
reply to post by Majestic RNA

 

Yes I saw some of those posts in the thread

Its pure logic that it would have been cheaper to build it to full spec in the first instance than to make expensive repairs down the track...

Therefore they have wasted money on this thing...

And you, my friend are 100% correct in your assertion

It was built to full spec!

This project was huge. Nobody could account for every little thing that might go wrong during it's operation. It ain't like there was dozens of these things constructed beforehand where lessons could have been learned thanks to past experiences. This machine is basically it's own prototype & obviously as with anything of this scale, things are bound to go wrong at some stage.

The machine is fully working, they're going to run it at 50% before shutting down. They will spend a bit of time making a few tweaks & repairs before bringing it back online & going full pelt.

Dont know if this has been mentioned but prof brian cox aka one of the scientists whos worked with the lhc has said via twitter. Thats its not faulty, Its just a normal upgrade. And that the bbc has over-reacted

Large Hadron Collider - inside

Without love.. all machines break down, even the mechanics of your body.

i.e.- driving a race car passionately, and not breaking a single thing on it, but and except when things go bad, they go out with a bang. 100% totaled, even and including if that means your sudden death. not a little break here and little leak there. All or nothing. problem, too many separated worker ants and not one genius to oversee the entire project. you're only as strong as your weakest link.

That kind of money should be spent on real research like finding cures.
Oh well, it's just 2 billion dollars.

Awe man... looks like I have to wait a little longer to see some incredible science articles published on its findings.

Higgs boson... you can run, but you can't hide.

I sure do love science and technology and all, but the $$$ could have fed a lot of kids in Africa.

Advancing the human race and our knowledge doesn't take first priority when there's world hunger, to me.

Heard they caught Michael J Fox on video cameras come flying in years ago in his DeLorean, that should have sent the first signals of espionage out to the watchdogs.

reply to post by Majestic RNA


Ok, so how is that money "wasted"?

They are trying to develop something, a prototype, for the first time.

As the guy stated, he doesn't see how this was a design flaw at the time of design - it's what they thought was correct. The fact that it wasn't shows they're learning and bettering themselves.

And that isn't something you can but a price tag on. Well, not easily.

Tell us what *should* have happened then? Give them X amount of money and if it doesn't work, that's it? We stop experimenting and researching simply because it's costly? I don't understand how the money was "wasted".

if you have a break down of the costs of materials they used and you can prove they paid over the top for certain resources, tools, equipment - they yes, I'll say money was wasted.

But until you have that - I simply do not agree that money is "wasted" on such a large scale endeavour.

Originally posted by SuperSlovak
That kind of money should be spent on real research like finding cures.
Oh well, it's just 2 billion dollars.

But the LHC is just a important.

Hopefully, it would allows scientists and physicists to learn about the theoretical particles they hypothesise to exist.

And discovering said particles gives them insights and understanding of how "current" physics and matter interact, allowing them to predict and model new theories.

That in turn allows them to better control and manipulate our understanding of current sciences and tech. Which has it's fingers in all areas, chemistry, physics, biology, etc.

It's all linked - so I would hardly think the 2bill is wasted.

reply to post by Majestic RNA


Or this is just a cover story so that the project can go completely black for a year or two.

I'd believe this, before I believed a shut down due to maintenance repairs excuse.








[edit on 11-3-2010 by 3DPrisoner]

The time isnt right to open the other demensional portal to the pit I guess. not till around 2012 perhaps. perhaps the end of of 2012.

'm a bit surprised people are so easy to condemn them when they hit a stumbling block. Yeh, it sucks - I wish it was up and running and discovering new things everyday. Sure, it costs money - it always will. But what happened to the spirit of human endeavour?

Yes, but at some point, a cost-risk analysis needs to be made...and chilling out for a bit (while the world economy recovers), and then utilizing newer and newer technologies as they become available, may be the more prudent way to go here...especially if government (any government) funds are involved.

I'm all for discovery, but it just seems that a LOT of money is being poured down this hole in the ground...

(and to boot, I can't say I agree with a lot of the theories they are hoping to get evidence for, but that's a whole other ballgame)...(nor do I have the credentials to bolster such a claim, it's just a personal feeling on the matter)... When you have to "require" the existence of other dimensions just to "make your math right", then maybe your theory ain't so solid...?

I work on certain aspects of the LHC project (mainly computing) and am familiar with more details than most ATS members.

Nothing like LHC ever existed, pure and simple. It's a big and very complex piece of technology most people won't ever have knowledge to appreciate. If the design proved suboptimal, that was due to the effort to control costs. It didn't work out too well but then again that's because it was, and is, the first for humanity.

In the meantime, we are looking towards a long LHC run and hopefully there'll be exciting new phenomena found. This run is also needed to fully understand the detectors -- trust me, with such scale and complexity you need beam time to learn the instruments that you have.

A strange comment by the scientist quoted in the OP.

It could be a case of the LHC actually having achieved its goal as far as TPTB are concerned.

One of the many experiments could have been based on a demand that the scientists carry it out, ask no questions, then be allowed to run with their own experiments. Alas only one end of the deal has been struck.

Im sure if Im right one of the scientists who were looking forward to playing with their new toy wont be long in blowing the whistle.

Respects

It's hard to build a house without problems much less new technology's based on theory, and not have something go wrong. I'm all for this project just to see what happens, its only a waste of money to scrap it now. Hopefully it wont dissatisfy and come to be nothing, most people would rather it be sucked in a gravity hole then learn that smashing particals together does nothing at all but some pretty lights .