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Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Apr 09, 2007 08:09 AM
from the allright-which-of-you-got-the-A dept.
Science
javipas writes "The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN has suffered a big explosion deep inside that has caused a leak of hellium gas and the quick evacuation of everyone working there. The reason: a mathematical mistake that affected the design of the giant superconductive magnets made by Fermilab. Now the company will have to repair and upgrade the 24 magnets that are installed on the 27 km. circunference of one of the most important research centers on Earth." This story might seem strangely familiar to you.
+ -
story

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Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider 50 Comments More /

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  • Forgetting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mulvane (692631) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:12AM (#18661909)
    To carry the 1 can cost lives! I never believed it in elementary school when my teacher that math could affect my life, but damn, the stuff can kill you!!!! Treat math with respect!

  • Almost success! (Score:5, Funny)

    by AaxelB (1034884) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:18AM (#18661961)

    The machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aims to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang, when the universe is thought to have exploded into existence about 14 billion years ago.

    "There was a hell of a bang, the tunnel housing the machine filled with helium and dust and we had to call in the fire brigade to evacuate the place"

    Eh, sounds partially successful.

  • NPR Story missed this one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by your_mother_sews_soc (528221) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:19AM (#18661979)
    Talk about missed opportunities. I just listened to an NPR story at around 8:20 eastern time (US) about particle physics and the super collider. They mentioned how a particle zooming around in it would have the force of a bus, and colliding two particles would be an enormous crash. They talked about how particle physics has stagnated for the past few decades, about how the collider was built, and oddly enough, about what a breach of the coil would do. But no mention of an "accident." Hmmm. I guess I need to mail my pledge check.

    • Re:NPR Story missed this one (Score:5, Informative)

      by Waffle Iron (339739) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:32AM (#18662091)

      They mentioned how a particle zooming around in it would have the force of a bus

      Not really. The most powerful cosmic ray particles ever observed, which have are millions of times more energy than anything we can create, each have approximately the force of a thrown baseball. Perhaps *all* of the particles in the ring together have the energy of a moving bus.

      • Re:NPR Story missed this one (Score:5, Informative)

        by HoldenCaulfield (25660) on Monday April 09 2007, @01:02PM (#18665745) Journal
        The relevant quotation from the story on NPR [npr.org]:

        "It's the energy of a bus moving at a normal velocity," De Rujula says. So imagine a bus rolling along -- which has something like 10,000 trillion, trillion particles -- but transfer all that energy into one single particle. There will actually be a beam of protons; a whole fleet of subatomic particles, each carrying the energy of a bus.
        In other words, the grandparent just mis-remembered the story, or didn't realize how important the distinction could be when talking physics . . .

  • The real reason... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2007, @08:20AM (#18661985)
    Fermilab outsourced magnet design to Sony

  • The Great Mistake of '08 was no accident (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheHornedOne (50252) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:20AM (#18661991)
    Haven't these guys read their Dan Simmons?
  • What do you expect when using hellium?

  • Helium leak? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PFI_Optix (936301) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:22AM (#18662009) Journal
    What's so bad about that? Are they just afraid no one will take them seriously if they sound like the chipmunks when they report their findings? I mean, it's not like it's spraying O2 in the direction of the pilot light of their oven.

    • suffocation (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperBanana (662181) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:42AM (#18662185)

      What's so bad about that?

      What's bad is that it displaces all the oxygen in the area. This was a common cause of occupational deaths in MRI rooms- not flying metal objects attracted to the magnet (though a very small number of people have been killed by oxygen tanks and such.) An MRI repair tech was killed because of a slow helium leak that lowered the oxygen percentage enough that he passed out. That's why most if not all MRI facilities have gas monitors that monitor oxygen, nitrogen, and helium levels (liquid nitrogen is also used.)

      MRI machines have vents for this sort of thing. Also because if the magnet quenches, a LARGE amount of liquid helium will boil off; all the electrical energy used to generate the field, which is constantly running in the magnet, turns very quickly into thermal energy. If the vent wasn't there, the room would pressurize, preventing one from opening doors (even an outward opening door- enough force would make it impossible to overcome friction on the bolt.) Magnet quenches are done only in situations where someone's life is in immediate danger (say, they're trapped by a ferrous object and about to bleed out) because of the danger (and the fact that there's a 1:4 chance of destroying the multi-million-dollar magnet and boiling off thousands of gallons of very expensive liquid hydrogen.)

      It's been reported in vent failures when a magnet quenched that it rained oxygen; liquid helium is substantially colder than liquid oxygen. Shit happens: vent valves fail, birds nest in stuff, someone says "hey, what's that big empty pipe for" 6 rooms over and cuts it/blocks it off, etc. I think the MRI tech was killed because of a leaking o-ring.

      Are they just afraid no one will take them seriously if they sound like the chipmunks when they report their findings?

      Picture one guy yelling "Run, run! We'll all suffocate!" in a chipmunk voice, and everyone else laughing at how funny he sounds, and passing out. And dying.

      I mean, it's not like it's spraying O2 in the direction of the pilot light of their oven.

      Oxygen spraying in the direction of a pilot light in an oven will do nothing except make the pilot light burn at a higher temperature. It will not cause an explosion, because there's nothing else combustible in the oven, unless it's REALLY greasy.

      What is not a joking matter is smoking in high-oxygen environments or fires in spacecraft, because they do have lots of flammable stuff, like wire insulation (which is fire-resistant, not necessarily fire-proof.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Hoi Polloi (522990)

        What is not a joking matter is smoking in high-oxygen environments or fires in spacecraft, because they do have lots of flammable stuff, like wire insulation (which is fire-resistant, not necessarily fire-proof.)

        That sounds very familiar. [wikipedia.org]

      • Re:suffocation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Frohboy (78614) on Monday April 09 2007, @10:06AM (#18663213)

        It's been reported in vent failures when a magnet quenched that it rained oxygen; liquid helium is substantially colder than liquid oxygen.

        On a somewhat lighter note (since no one was hurt), an MR tech colleague of mine recounted the story (which I may be mangling a bit) of an intentional quench of an MRI at the facility where she worked previously. (I believe the magnet was either being decommissioned, or at least being moved to a different building -- regardless, they needed to release the helium).

        Apparently, they put out an announcement that morning (and earlier in the week), notifying everyone at the facility that the quench would be occurring at some specified time, and not to be alarmed. One of the senior researchers had been away at a conference for a few days, and arrived just as the quench was occurring. As they opened the vents to the roof and released the liquid helium, the suddenly-expanding cold gas shot up in column for a bit, condensing moisture in the air around it, before expanding out, and forming a wider ball.

        Needless to say, this researcher was quite shocked to get back to work in time to see a mushroom cloud over the building. :)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Dr_Mic (975409)
          It's not that the Helium in and of itself is dangerous (it is an inert gas, after all) but rather that it isn't oxygen. Inhaling the helium from a helium balloon will make you light headed (lack of oxygen) but the real danger is if you keep breathing helium w/out oxygen, you don't realize you're suffocating because the carbon dioxide is still being cleared from you lungs and its the CO2 that triggers the sensation of suffocation.

  • OOPS! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2007, @08:24AM (#18662019)
    This story has been brought to you by erasers. Don't make a mistake without one.

  • Some real information (Score:5, Informative)

    by gvc (167165) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:24AM (#18662029)
    Here's Fermilab's statment. Of course they are an interested party, but at least their statement contains information, unlike the snide popular press article.

    http://user.web.cern.ch/user/QuickLinks/Announceme nts/2007/LHCInnerTriplet.html [web.cern.ch]

    • "On Tuesday, March 27, there was a serious failure in a high-pressure test at CERN of a Fermilab-built "inner-triplet" series of three quadrupole magnets in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The magnets focus the particle beams prior to collision at each of four interaction points around the accelerator. Safety precautions were followed during the test, and no one was injured."

      May I pass along my congratulations for your great interdimensional breakthrough. I am sure, in the miserable annals of the

  • Units? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tx (96709) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:32AM (#18662079) Journal
    Fermilab - USA. CERN - Europe. You guys did use metric units this time, right? ;)

    • Re:Units? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TopherC (412335) on Monday April 09 2007, @11:38AM (#18664655)
      Unfortunately, the US also has "egg on their face" from other goings-on in particle physics. Another fairly recent disaster was the cancellation of BTeV [fnal.gov]. This was most unfortunate because European collaborators were completely disenfranchised. By not having a system in place that can effectively fund a multi-year research project, we've lost valuable collaborators and lost international credibility. In addition to this, we've lost enormous amounts of funding for particle physics over the past decade, and as of now there are no major new experiments being built in the US, and everything that's running will pretty much shut down by 2008 (Fermilab, SLAC, Brookhaven, CESR/CLEO). All Fermilab has going for it after 2008 is that they can build magnets, and now with these issues maybe even that is suspect. As particle physics tends to thrive only on relatively large experiments that take well over a decade to go from proposal to construction and finally operation, it's hard to imagine that basic science in the US will even be relevant any more to the worldwide community for at least the next few decades, if ever again. What's just as frustrating as this was the complete lack of media coverage as the US accomplished its "exit strategy" in particle physics, beginning in about 1993 and ending just about now.

  • They should have listened (Score:5, Funny)

    by aalu.paneer (872021) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:32AM (#18662083)
    Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations [theonion.com]

  • Ah, it's All about the Higgs Boson (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dr. Eggman (932300) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:33AM (#18662095)
    So the Higgs Boson is a theoretical particle which both the LHC and the Tevatron are trying to prove the existance of and determine its mass. It is important because it could be an elementary particle that could explain the origin of mass of other elementary particles and differentiate between the massless proton and the heavy W and Z Bosons, indicating where the differentiation between electromagnetism and weak force arises. Better understanding these fundamental forces could affect better understanding aspects of microstructures and the univ... Ah hell, I have no idea what this is all about! This one's over my head, I think I'll go back to Soviet Russia jokes now.

    • Re:Ah, it's All about the Higgs Boson (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hey! (33014) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:52AM (#18662285) Homepage Journal
      I'll make it simple: whatever the standard theory says, root for it to be wrong as wrong can be, and for the entire theoretical physics community to go on a rampage, ripping out and replacing things we've long held to so certain they were hardly worth questioning.

      It's bound to be more fun that way.

      Of course governments will be freaked that they spent so much money to prove something and failed to do it, but that entirely misses the point. What makes trying to prove our basic assumptions about the universe worthwhile is the small possibility that they're wrong in some fundamental and important way. I for one look forward to the day when some big shot physicists hold a press conference and announce, "You know what we've been telling all along about [perpetual motion/faster than light travel/anti-gravity/time travel]? Well, it turns out not to be entirely, precisely true." How cool would that be?

      It'll be a big ho-hum if they announce that they've found the Higgs Boson exactly the way they expected with exactly the observations they predicted.
      • The universe, being rather on the largish-side, probably already contains at least two of everything possible within it, formed naturally through one way or another (such as the evolution of a species which is obsessed with lunch, and so designs and constructs the Free Sandwich button).

        However, of the many infinite realities which do not exist, those in which Free Sandwich buttons were possible became filled with sandwiches soon after their initial springing-forth, nilling the potential for all other life, and so clearly the Anthropic principle takes over.

        Of course, this is a flawed argument anyway, since as far as we know, and free sandwich button could probably not produce sandwiches at a rate which would cause a sandwich queue to expand at faster than the speed of light, and would probably collapse into a delicious but deadly black hole before expanding to reality-threatening magnitudes. I think the argument's concept is clear and reasonable, however.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by hey! (33014)
          What if we allow for the existence of imaginary sandwiches? Or at least sandwiches of imaginary mass?

  • Gadzooks! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Control Group (105494) * on Monday April 09 2007, @08:38AM (#18662145) Homepage
    We've lost containment of the hellium! Quick, we need a goateed doctor and a musclebound space marine from Phobos!

  • What kind of leak? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ewhenn (647989) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:50AM (#18662261)
    ...a leak of hellium gas and....

    Jesus christ! ... oh wait.....
  • On my first scan of the /. home page this morning, I read this headline as "Bad Meth Causes Explosion at CERN Collider". Needless to say, the actual story turned out to be a lot less interesting than I thought it would be :-D

  • Helium is not friendly! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sockatume (732728) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:23AM (#18662641) Homepage
    When you're working with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium (as coolants for superconducting magnets) it's easy to assume they're harmless because they're chemically inert. However a small volume of liquid boils into a huge volume of gas, which will exclude the air - and precious oxygen - from the vicinity. A big helium leak is no laughing matter because of the asphyxiation risk.

  • Something smells fishy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hoi Polloi (522990) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:24AM (#18662647) Journal
    So Fermilab, CERN's competition, designed the magnets that happened to have a basic design flaw? Hmmmm, cue The Beastie Boys tune "Sabotage"!

    • Re:Something smells fishy (Score:4, Informative)

      by The_Wilschon (782534) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:50AM (#18663011) Homepage
      Fermilab and CERN are only competitors under a quite loose definition of the word. ATLAS and CMS are competitors, CDF and D0 are competitors, Fermilab and CERN are not really. Actually, most of the people working at CERN either also work at or have worked at Fermilab (or one of the other accelerator labs). Most of the people at Fermilab are anticipating working at CERN in the next few years. I myself have been working at Fermilab for the last few years, but I am starting work at CERN this summer.

      CERN is a continuation of what Fermilab has been working on, not a rival.

      The CAPTCHA is "footstep". Appropriate. CERN is following in Fermilab's footsteps (and then going quite a bit further).

  • Obligatory Office Space (Score:3, Funny)

    by Critical Facilities (850111) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:24AM (#18662649) Homepage
    "I must've....put a decimal in the wrong place. DAMMIT! I always do that!"

  • When Physicists screw up... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Temkin (112574) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:33AM (#18662793)

    When physicists screw up, they certainly do it spectacularly. Though I don't think this quite rises to the level of the Castle Bravo "oops" [wikipedia.org] :-)

  • CERN Collider explosion pros and cons (Score:3, Funny)

    by robson (60067) on Monday April 09 2007, @10:47AM (#18663885) Homepage
    Pros: Finally get to field-test that cool Tau Cannon.

    Cons: Headcrabs everywhere.

    • Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Eudial (590661) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:17AM (#18661959)

      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...


      Don't you mean

      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
      I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...

    • Not a Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2007, @08:19AM (#18661981)

      Isn't this the same story as from a week or two ago?
      While it may have the same message to you (Big Ass Magnet Fails on Fermilab's Collider at CERN), it's actually the result of an investigation.

      From one of the articles in your link:

      Fermilab will appoint an external review committee to analyze how this problem occurred and determine root causes and lessons learned.
      The old story was that stuff blew up. The new story is why it blew up so we don't make the same mistakes. Turns out it, was just bad math. It wasn't that we didn't understand some physics, it wasn't the gods being mad, it was just plan old avoidable bad math.

      A somber and depressing article for the /. community considering how many people have been posting about the huge leaps in physics this machine was supposed to bring us ... hopefully another country will come up with something similar to keep this research rolling while CERN awaits repairs.
      • It wasn't that we didn't understand some physics, it wasn't the gods being mad, it was just plan old avoidable bad math.

        In theory, all mistakes are avoidable. The problem is avoiding them.,

      • What's Getting Cancelled To Pay to Fix This? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SydShamino (547793) on Monday April 09 2007, @10:35AM (#18663695)
        So what science is going to get canned to pay for this fix?

        This reminds me of the accident at the Princeton TFTR when it was being installed. The fusion reactor used huge flywheels to store sufficient power to operate the tokamak (without pulling down the electric grid). During installation, a contractor dropped one of the flywheels from an overhead crane.

        To fix the flywheel, congress cancelled almost every other fusion research project in the country. This was when, for example, the EFBT project at NASA was cancelled - despite having results as or more promising than tokamak research.

        (My plasma sciences professor at college had previously led the EFBT project; the story is repeated from him.)

        I wonder what dozen other less-well-known research projects are going to get canned to fix this high-profile mistake, and what breakthroughs we'll lose because of it.

      • Re:Not a Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

        by bockelboy (824282) on Monday April 09 2007, @11:27AM (#18664469)
        I work on the LHC (although not a particle physicist, I talk to ones every day).

        If you had to explain it at an 8th grade level (as newspapers aim for these days), you'd say "bad math". If you are on a nerd site like Slashdot, I'd hope we wouldn't need to make that simplification. The story is a dupe. It is still the same as before - the assymmetrical load was not put into the requirements for the magnets and overlooked during four internal and *external* reviews. CERN had all the right data, and they overlooked that specific test too.

        There is a committee reviewing the case, and their findings will be released April 24 (tentatively). FNAL's goal is to have this not delay turn-on at all, although it'll cost some amount of money to fix. They hope the repairs can be made in-ground. The absolute worst-case would be if they have to take the magnets up to the surface to fix them; that will certainly cause a time delay.

        Right now, they suspect it's an additional cost, but not a delay for the November turn-on. That picture could get worse, but we won't know until around May.

        Lots of the world's top particle physicists have been on this project for many years; any country capable of doign "other" research is certainly already heavily involved with the LHC. The only possible project which will benefit from the delay is the Tevatron at FNAL, but we're probably 18 months from running the LCG at Tevatron levels (it will take *at least* a year to begin to get all the bugs worked out and tunings done to a multi-billion dollar system).

        One delay will be noise compared to the amount of effort needed to prove the existence of the Higgs.

        • Re:Not a Dupe (Score:4, Informative)

          by bockelboy (824282) on Monday April 09 2007, @01:36PM (#18666261)
          I guess I should cover my ass and point out that none of that post is priveleged information; beyond my meandering speculations, you can read the press release yourself:

          The goal at CERN and Fermilab is now to redesign and repair the inner triplet magnets and, if necessary, the DFBX without affecting the LHC start-up schedule. Teams at CERN and Fermilab have identified potential repairs that could be carried out expeditiously without removing undamaged triplet magnets from the tunnel.. All three of the pressure-tested triplet magnets at Point 5, plus the associated DFBX, will be removed from the tunnel for inspection and, if necessary, repair. CERN will manage the redesign and repair effort and has scheduled a review for April 24-25 to validate the selected method. Fermilab will take part in the review. Repair of the triplet magnets would begin after validation by the reviewers. The immediate goal is to have a repaired triplet in another sector of the accelerator ready to participate in a pressure test scheduled for June 1.
          Primary sources are always better than some guy commenting. [web.cern.ch]

    • Re:DUPE (Score:5, Funny)

      by Walt Dismal (534799) on Monday April 09 2007, @09:16AM (#18662561)
      Well, a week ago the accident propelled the collider into the future, and that's why it's being reported today. Sheesh, do we have to explain **everything ** to ya?

    • Re:John Titor delayed (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dunbal (464142) on Monday April 09 2007, @08:48AM (#18662251)
      As a result of the creation of microsingularities, the explosion has been delayed about a week while it time travels...which explains why the original article failed to mention an explosion.

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