Lights out at LEP

As we were going to press, the CERN directorate announced that the 2 November shutdown of LEP was indeed the $e+e−$ collider's final termination. The 27‐km LEP tunnel will now be made ready for the Large Hadron Collider, which should be providing 14‐TeV proton‐proton collisions by 2005. LEP had already enjoyed a one‐month reprieve in response to recent tantalizing hints of a possible Higgs boson with a mass of about $115 GeV/c2.$ But, after heated discussion, it was finally decided that the extra October run did not uncover sufficient confirmatory evidence to justify a costly further extension of LEP's 11‐year life.