CERN Courier - March 2009

• CERN firms up the LHC schedule

In a workshop in Chamonix on 2–6 February, members of the LHC accelerator and experimental teams, as well as CERN’s management, met to formulate a realistic timetable to have the LHC running safely and delivering collisions. The main outcome is that there will be physics data from the LHC in 2009 and there is a strong recommendation to run the machine through the winter until the experiments have produced substantial quantities of data. Such extended running could achieve an integrated luminosity of more than 200 pb^–1 at 5 TeV per beam.

• Protons reach the J-PARC Hadron Experimental Hall

The Main Ring at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) has reached a new milestone with the successful extraction of a proton beam to the Hadron Experimental Hall and then to the beam dump.

• MSU will host new rare-isotope facility...

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Michigan State University (MSU) to design and establish the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a new research facility to advance the understanding of rare nuclear isotopes and nuclear astrophysics. It should take about a decade to design and build at an estimated cost of $550 million. FRIB will serve an international community of around 1000 researchers. MSU currently hosts the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). Its director, Konrad Gelbke, will lead the team to establish the FRIB on the MSU campus.

• ...and projects to upgrade the NSCL make excellent progress

Despite the winter weather, including more than 50 cm of snow in December, construction continued on the new office wing and the new experimental area for research with stopped and reaccelerated rare isotope beams at the NSCL at MSU. Construction milestones achieved by the end of 2008 included: completing the steelwork for the new experimental area; tearing down one of the original wings of the NSCL building to make space for the new offices; completing the office foundations and underground utilities; and drilling the well for the lift shaft. Work continues on the steel superstructure for the new office block and on masonry for the new experimental area, which is scheduled to be enclosed in February.

• MINOS maps the deepest secrets of the upper atmosphere

A collaborative study by particle physicists and atmospheric researchers has found the first correlations between daily variations in cosmic-ray muons detected deep below ground and large-scale phenomena in the upper atmosphere. The effect suggests that underground muon-detectors could play a valuable role in identifying certain meteorological events and observing long-term trends.