About LHC Progress

There are rumours appearing here and there about further imminent delays of the LHC start-up. As for the facts, two weeks ago Lyn Evans, who is the LHC project leader, gave a colloquium about the current status of the LHC. He did not mention any delays, but he described in great detail the efforts they are currently undertaking and the problems that have emerged. The video recording of this talk is available here. In particular, at 52:35 Lyn devotes some time to the plug-in modules between magnet interconnects, whose faults spawned the recent rumours. While I personally don't understand why can't they tie up the magnets with strings (or superstrings in the case of superconducting magnets), i guess those more experimentally oriented may get some insight. Anyway, experts advise not to get excited with this particular problem; there will be many others. As Lyn himself put it, at this point we are far less deterministic.