The End of the World is postponed

The Man writes...those of you who know about my CERN past may be surprised that I haven't blogged about the LHC before now.

Don't get me wrong: this is a remarkable machine and an inspirational endeavour, but since the main story on September 10th was apparently that the LHC might produce an Earth-swallowing black hole, please can I put a few things straight...It's not really the largest collider ever built - the LEP collider was built in the same tunnel twenty years ago so is equally as big. It is not currently the most powerful proton collider ever built - the protons in the "Tevatron" near Chicago, which has been running since the mid 1980s, have more than twice as much energy. And September 10th - in full view of the World's press - was not the first time that beam was injected into the LHC, as made clear on CERN's website.

The beam energy - and the field in LHCs superconducting magnets - must now be increased by a factor of more than 10 before the physics begins. This was always going to be the toughest part, and involves "training" (i.e. "quenching") the magnets. But thanks to the remarkable success of CERN's publicity machine, last Friday's almost inevitable setback, which has postponed further beam operations till next year, has occurred in the intense glare of the world's media.

It could be years before LHC has high current beams colliding at full energy (and years after that before significant physics results emerge from the detectors). So don't hold your breath. And don't stop worrying about those black holes yet either...