Oh noes!

[PBI]

LHC unlikely to be back online before June (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7734251.stm)

This will put the project fully two years behind schedule. Frankly I'm getting concerned for the viability of the project; I fear that it may end up in a situation in which each problem takes so long to fix that something else will have failed in the meantime, and we will simply end up chasing around fixing problem after problem until the funding runs out.

Meanwhile the funding for the proposed International Linear Collider is looking doubtful, so I am becoming concerned for the future of particle physics; with no available means to experimentally test our theories all our speculation on the Higgs boson, Supersymmetry and extra dimensions will become rather meaningless.

[Ramses II CP]

It would truly be tragic for those things to become meaningless, as opposed to their current meaninglessness. The LHC was largely sold on the (false) idea that the Higgs could close the circle of physics, though this represents as much the ignorance of the politicians as the willful deception of administrators. If the LHC now fails that can become a good thing, as the next logical step to the study of physicis is a permanant presence outside the earth's atmosphere, which has far more potential benefits than just another big circle of magnets in the dirt. :smash:

:egypt:

[Caius]

We will live longer.