> There is nothing wrong with LHC - lazy journalism.
> Schedule announced in Jan, 18 months physics, 12 month
> engineering shutdown afterwards
> I just saw the BBC "news" story about LHC schedule -
> I know I'm a BBC person but it's really shoddy! This
> kind of thing really annoys me.
> ALL particle accelerators have 6 - 12 month regular
> shutdowns for maintenance and upgrades. That's how
> complex machines are operated !
> I repeat: #LHC will run for 12 - 18 months now. It will
> then shut down, AS ACCELERATORS DO, for maintenance and
> upgrades. ENGINEERING !!!
This is causing something of an uproar in TwitterSpace:
Indeed. It surprised me reading this BBC article, as we hadn't heard anything along those lines here at CERN. In fact, the Director General sent a note (http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/msg-dg-1003...) to all CERN personnel, very much cheerful about the future, without mentioning any kind of unforeseen interruption in operations.
All levels of management at CERN are very open, both about successes and failures. Even more so about the latter: bad news travel fast and all that (and we are a quite close community here on-site).
Relevant quotation: "After a one to one-and-a-half year shutdown in 2012 to retrofit the rest of the machine and make other preparations, the LHC will attempt to double the energy, to 14 TeV in the center of mass, in 2013 and accumulate substantial physics data."
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23LHC
Edited for layout and to add link to twitter search. And this comment.