Is CERN shutting its Higgs Program?

[pessimist]

This is an extremely speculative post. I came to know through a friend of mine, that his professor told him that CERN is going to announce by spring 2012 the closure of all Higgs and Supersymmetry related programs. I do not have any citation for this claim. More knowledgeable people can tell me if this is a true rumor.


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[Bill_K]

Absolute nonsense.

 

[ZapperZ]

This is an extremely speculative post. I came to know through a friend of mine, that his professor told him that CERN is going to announce by spring 2012 the closure of all Higgs and Supersymmetry related programs. I do not have any citation for this claim. More knowledgeable people can tell me if this is a true rumor.


~~

Some time, it is possible for news to get twisted around into an unrecognizable form from the original.

There is a PLANNED shutdown to upgrade the beam energy to the nominal value in 2012. It is NOT the "... closure of all Higgs and Supersymmetry .. " program. That would be utterly silly since you might as well shut down the collider for good.

Zz.

 

[pessimist]

CERN anyways extended the LHC run to search for Higgs to mid 2012, so curtailing it by a quarter doesn't seem nonsense to me. I may be wrong ofcourse.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1987868/cern_extends_lhcs_run_until_2012/index.html

 

[pessimist]

Some time, it is possible for news to get twisted around into an unrecognizable form from the original.

There is a PLANNED shutdown to upgrade the beam energy to the nominal value in 2012. It is NOT the "... closure of all Higgs and Supersymmetry .. " program. That would be utterly silly since you might as well shut down the collider for good.

Zz.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Bill_K]

CERN anyways extended the LHC run to search for Higgs to mid 2012

The current schedule is to continue proton collisions through Oct 2012 and ion collisions during Nov 2012. The "Long Shutdown" commences Dec 2012 and will last through 2013.

Possible improvements during 2012 include a slight increase in energy to 4 TeV per beam and an increase in luminosity of about 50 percent. Neither of these issues have been decided yet.