[robryan]

I'd imagine it still can conduct valuable science though? Kind of like how keplar discoveries are confirmed by small ground based telescopes which are more able to dedicate their time to a single object for a time.

The LHC might be more powerful but couldn't it throw up things that need more detailed analysis that the LHC doesn't have time for with many groups clamoring for time on it? Of course this may not be as true of physics as astronomy, I only know the basics of physics.

[jessriedel]

The surprising thing about high-energy-frontier accelerators is that, for the most part, groups aren't competing for beam time like they are at many other types of particle physics experiments. Roughly, they just hit the "Go" button on the machine, and collect data continuously. This data is then distributed to thousands of grad students, who sift through it looking for a million possible signals.

There is a caveat that the LHC does some heavy-ion collisions (the ALICE experiment), which takes about a month away from normal proton-proton collisions, but this isn't a big deal. I'm not sure about the Tevatron, but I don't think they have any other experiments besides D0 and CDF which could justify the operating expense.

[icegreentea]

Not really. The bottle-neck for LHC isn't how many collisions it can throw up, or how fine its measurements can be, but rather processing the data. The data that LHC throws out goes all over the world (including Fermilab). LHC's engineering triumph is as much high-energy physics, as data processing/storage. Remember, most of the time the LHC isn't actually colliding, as opposed to telescopes.

[jessriedel]

> Remember, most of the time the LHC isn't actually colliding,

Huh? I'm pretty sure the LHC is designed to spend >50% of it's time colliding. Lately they've had to spend more downtime upgrading the machine because it's been finicky, but this if definitely hurting the project. The decisions about what risks to take and how much downtime to allow are hugely contested.

> The bottle-neck for LHC isn't how many collisions it can throw up...

The number of collisions is definitely a bottleneck. Yes, to some extent you can make up for a small data set by throwing more grad-students at the data to create a more clever analysis, but that really doesn't take you far. Searches for most major new physics scenarios have very well-defined minimum amounts of data. If the requisite amount of data isn'y taken in the LHC's 1-2 decade lifetime (because of delays/budget/whatever), and another accelerator isn't built, then we simply won't be able to evaluate that scenario.

[splat]

> Remember, most of the time the LHC isn't actually colliding, as opposed to telescopes.

As an astronomer, I would hope that your telescopes also are not spending most of their time colliding. :)

(Although, if you're not careful, some older telescopes will let you run them into the ground.)