Symmetry factor

It was long rumored that CERN will cancel its engineering run in 2007 in favor of the full-blown high energy run in 2008 (one of the reasons was believed to be that little mishap with magnets). So it was just announced that it is indeed true, the accelerator will turn on in May 2008 — here is CERN press-release. To quote them:

“A low-energy run originally scheduled for this year has been dropped as the result of a number of minor delays accumulated over the final months of LHC installation and commissioning, coupled with the failure in March of a pressure test in one of the machine’s components.”

So technically they are still on-schedule for the high-energy run… I guess, it will just add to frustration of some of the fellow bloggers from Condensed Matter physics.