The beam intensity spiked to 9x10^9, so Louis called PCP to ask them to reduce it. He was told that the source was almost depleted, and was presented with two options:
A) Keep pushing the source and run at 5x10^5, but run out completely soon (probably during the night shift)
B) Let the rates slowly drop and open the slits as much as possible, to make the source last longer (perhaps another day). This option is strongly preferred by the PCP team, and is the current plan we are following.
Changing the source would apparently take ~12 hrs. There will be a large meeting of all of the technical staff - including the beam and source experts - tomorrow morning at 09:00, so there may be more information about the best course of action after that.
Wilton was consulted as one of the spokespeople of the experiment, and he approves of this action. |