A CERN press release was issued today following the LHC Performance Workshop in Chamonix last week:
CERN management today confirmed the restart schedule for the Large Hadron Collider resulting from the commendations from last week's Chamonix workshop. The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
Since I leave CERN for travelling in mid-June, I won't witness the restart in September, but I will be back early next year to witness some data taking and I hope we will have collected enough for me to do a decent analysis for my thesis, though it will be tight, as I should be finishing in the second half of next year... It does look promising though, with only a short break over Christmas, rather than the usual winter shutdown due to electricity prices. Here's hoping...
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