• Question: How long did it take for the Lhc to be built?

    Asked by yoloswagmaster123 to Kristian on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      It would have been interesting to have you *guess* how long it took, because I am sure you would have been waaayyy off. 🙂 So, here’s the timeline:
      the first version of the plan how to build it was made in 1984.
      1984!!!
      It was finally ready to go and switched on in 2008,
      TWENTY-FOUR YEARS later.
      Details:
      – proposed in 1984.
      – lots of research and development, planning how to build it and how much
      it would cost, how useful it would be for science or so. this alone took 10
      years!
      – in 1994 the decision was made to actually build it
      – detailed research and development, more detailed planning, and construction of prototypes for the various parts goes on
      – in 2000, the main construction work starts (digging massive caves
      for the LHC experiments, for example)
      – in 2008, the machine was ready to go
      And it’s going to be running for a long time. Just recently I’ve seen a run plan for the LHC that extended to 2035, with several breaks of a year or more each in between to improve it. And even once the LHC is switched off for good, there’ll still be another 10 years or so of work to do analyzing the data.
      so, you see, this is a MASSIVE experiment in every sense of the word. Not quite like something you plug together in science class and then put back onto a shelf afterwards. 🙂

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