Large Hadron Collider Switches Off for Two-Year Break

Break?! Who said that the two years will be a break. This is the window where the real work happens. Every nut, bolt, connector, camera, detector, etc. found during operation to not work quite the way they thought can now be worked on. During this initial part of this shutdown scientists will finally comb through the enormous piles of data and decide what they also want to sense, steer, tweak or ignore. This will generate a brief fire storm of meetings as desires confront the realities of room for new equipment and budgets to acquire and install this new equipment. A list of new installations will be delegated to the engineers working to install the already approved and funded upgrades. Time will now come into play when it is realized some of the new upgrades will take longer to fabricate, test and install than what time remains of the scheduled shutdown. Man power and financial budgets must now be decided by reluctant administrators fearful of cutting the wrong project.

This is not a break, this is when the real fun happens.