Another unique day, and yet still more crazy! After a mindblowing visit to various high-energy accelerator test facilities with CERN’s accelerator director Mike Lamont (more on that later maybe), I went to the Cern Control Centre and had a unique chance to “dump the beam” of the LHC, i.e. to turn it off temporarily so it can be reset and safely re-energised.

Yet when I did, something went wrong and it basically crashed! But it wasn’t my fault!! And hours later it’s still not back on.. let’s hope they get it running tonight, as it’s their >100/fB celebration party.

Here it is in action-packed slo-mo video!

 

and here’s the trace of the event embedded in the LHC data stream..

p.s. this is not the first time I have accidently crashed a particle accelerator!.. in fact it all started in 2007 with the “cicada experiment” I did during my first ANAT residency at the Australian Synchrotron – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0so0McL_-0