"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Large Hadron Collider will shut down for a year after 2011.

DISCOVERY:

The epic start-up drama surrounding the world's most powerful particle accelerator just took another painful twist. Due to unforeseeable mistakes during construction, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will need to be shut down, for a year, starting at the end of 2011.

This may sound like a real downer, especially after the flurry of recent successes -- from a thrilling start-up to most powerful particle collisions ever achieved -- but it's hardly surprising.

Although it might be tempting to think the LHC is somehow "cursed" (or that time-traveling Higgs bosons from the future are sabotaging the any attempt at discovering this elusive particle), this is what happens at the frontier of physics.

WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME!