A question that we have all been asking has been answered today: What will be the LHC run energy? A press release has just been issued from CERN Director General, Rolf Heuer, following the completion of tests on the LHC magnets and splices. Here are the excepts which just beeped into my inbox:
The LHC will run for the first part of the 2009-2010 run at 3.5 TeV per beam, with the energy rising later in the run. That's the conclusion that we've just arrived at in a meeting involving the experiments, the machine people and the CERN management. We've selected 3.5 TeV because it allows the LHC operators to gain experience of running the machine safely while opening up a new discovery region for the experiments. The developments that have allowed us to get to this point are good progress in repairing the damage in sector 3-4 and the ...
