Graduate Students Unable to Complete LHC Theses

Some graduate students have been hit hard by the various hold-ups at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which have delayed the start-up from last September (already later than expected) all the way back to this October. Graduate students who were nearing the end of their degree program and were hoping to present LHC data as part of their doctoral thesis have to make tough decisions, as described in a recent PhysicsWorld article.

Some of these graduate students are able to run data analysis on simulated data, but other programs require more solid data to get a doctorate, which is making some researchers switch their focus from the LHC to the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab, near Chicago.

In the tradition of looking for the bright side, the physicists who are continuing work on the LHC are refining their analysis methods so that when the beams ramp up to full strength, they'll be able to interpret data from collisions that much faster. Still, for graduate students who are trying to stick it out, this means an unfortunate delay in the completion of their degree, but that's the price they pay for trying to have a thesis that explores the highest-energy particle interactions ever explored by science.