OK, for once I’m going to be the first blogger out there with news on the LHC schedule.  Today CERN put out a press release affirming that the LHC will restart in 2009, thus squashing the rumors that Adam mentioned in his post.  The release includes phrases like “ready for physics by summer” and “provide collision data for the experiments as soon as reasonably possible,” which I hope means that this is not just circulating single beams, but colliding beams.  It’s an encouraging statement.

Attached to the release is a report with more information about the analysis of the incident, and details of the repair plan, with what needs to be done with how many magnets etc.  One thing I know that people had been worried about was whether soot and/or debris had found its way into the beampipe at distances far from the original problem, which could have led to a major effort to clean many meters of pipe.  This appears not to be so bad; soot is limited to the pieces that are being repaired and replaced anyway, and other bits of debris seem to be easily removable.

Since I’m writing, has anyone noticed that they are still counting ballots in Minnesota?  Election officials now appear to be limited by systematic uncertainties associated with their methods.  Maybe it is time to flip a coin!

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