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Photos of the Damage To the Large Hadron Collider
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Dec 12, 2008 03:32 PM
from the do-not-try-this-at-home dept.
from the do-not-try-this-at-home dept.
holy_calamity writes "CERN have released images of the damage done to the world's most powerful machine, the Large Hadron Collider, when an electrical fault caused a helium leak. New Scientist has posted them, along with explanations of what you can see. The sudden burst of gas shifted some of the huge superconducting magnets by half a meter, causing at least $21 million in damage."
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[+]
CERN Releases Analysis of LHC Incident 149 comments
sash writes "From the fresh press release: 'Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.
Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no one was put at risk. Sufficient spare components are in hand to ensure that the LHC is able to restart in 2009, and measures to prevent a similar incident in the future are being put in place.'"
[+]
IT: LHC Repair To Cost At Least $21 Million 163 comments
ThanatosMinor writes "September's quench at the Large Hadron Collider is going to cost CERN at least $21 million and delay future collisions until June of 2009 at the earliest. Enjoy your last few months outside of an event horizon."
[+]
IT: Princeton Student Finds Bug In LHC Experiment 243 comments
An anonymous reader writes "A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets. 'Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator. Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider, has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.'"
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Doubts. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm conCERNed that this think may never stay functional long enough to destroy the earth.
On an unrelated note, if there's two things I love, one is pointless, likely redundant puns, and the other is shouting "the sky is falling!"
21m$ 210m$ doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
The sooner they get back on track (geddit) the better
Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some say it was largely due to infighting with 'higher educational interests' back East and in the Chicago area, - but really the answer most likely due to nothing more than Greed and Money.
TO think that The US Federal Government will give taxpayer money to banks et al to the tune of $2 Trillion with NIL oversight and NIL public disclosure is extremely dangerous and shortsighted. ( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=aXNaCKxb.oIs [bloomberg.com] )
We (in the US) could have had something MORE POWERFUL than the LHC here in the US. (As I try not to think about the high-energy physicist brain-drain to France/Switzerland)...
Once upon a time, the US took pride in having the best and coolest toys the world over... (/sigh)
Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst part about the SSC is mentioned in the parent comment's parenthetical comment about brain drain.
When the SSC was cancelled, there was a flood of high-energy physicists who were suddenly out of work. The US lost an entire generation of talent in physics. Instead of continuing on with a remarkable collection of centers of excellence, each themselves breeding excellence, and maintain the intellectual, scientific, technical, and economic advantages that the US Government prides itself on, the (pardon me) boneheads in Congress thought it better to continue the long slog toward mediocrity.
High-energy physics no longer happens in the US (my apologies to readers at LL, LANL, Brookhaven, Fermi, Argonne, Berkeley, and so forth). It happens in Europe and will continue to do so for the forseable future.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And by an odd coincidence, that['s about when particle physics took a detour into String Theory from which it has yet to recover. Almost nothing of value has happened in the field (especially in the US) since the SSC was canned. But hey, we can toss $30B to bail out the executive bonuses for a bank and not think twice about it (or even once).
Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Interesting)
And by another odd coincidence, other particle physicists took a detour into Wall Street, where they applied their advanced mathematical knowledge to creating exotic derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, but arguably without proper financial training or real-world experience. One is tempted to wonder whether the U.S. might be ahead by $2 trillion - $12 billion = $1.988 trillion had they just gone and financed the SSC instead.
Parent
Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Funny)
And by another odd coincidence, other particle physicists took a detour into Wall Street, where they applied their advanced mathematical knowledge to creating exotic derivatives like Credit Default Swaps
That's the scariest correlation I've heard in a long time.
<Credit Bank VP>: "'Morning, Erwin, how's the CDO hedge working out? Makin' the firm some megabux?"
<Ex-physicist>: "Maybe we did, maybe we didn't."
In the end, the VP opened Erwin Schrödinger's books, collapsed the quantum superposition of mortgage debt obligations, and found that the economy was dead.
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Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Funny)
the (pardon me) boneheads in Congress
Well, if you think you can do better, I hear there's an opening for sale in Illinois.
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Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Interesting)
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SSC reuse. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm really quite disappointed in the computer games community, that they haven't used a revamped SSC as a fictional location for a racing game. I mean, you have nice tubular tunnels which means that cars can loop-the-loop and do all sorts of cool things ... at maximum speed, the driving view would be at ~90 degrees to horizontal in the bends ... just needs some section colour coding, a bunch of floating c
This is actually pretty cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually pretty cool... and I'll tell you why I feel that way.
If it just worked, I'd be amazed at the results, follow the discoveries. But there's something about it NOT working that reminds me this is the cuttingf edge of the cutting edge. Thi is when the rocket launch explodes on the pad, this is when the systems fail... and it shouts "humanity is working outside its limits, and we're pushing those limits every time we do something like this". I dig it when the REALLY REALLY smart people have issues with something... usually thats very cool stuff.
I should say when they have trouble with 'technical/physics/electronics' kind of stuff. Not with women. We know they have trouble there already.
I liked the earlier description... (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10120215-76.html [cnet.com]
"A resistive zone developed in one of the electrical connections, creating an electrical arc that punctured one of the helium enclosures around a magnet, according to an analysis by CERN. The warming helium expanded in the vacuum enclosure of the central subsector of the pipe, damaging the vacuum barriers separating the central subsector from the neighboring subsectors."
Geordi La Forge couldn't have said it better.
Re:I liked the earlier description... (Score:5, Funny)
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Just a Cover Story (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone who has been following these developments closely knows that the "helium leak" is just a cover story for the out of control mini black hole they created when they turned it on. Those magnets were shifted when they were finally able to collapse down the black hole, it went out with a massive gravitation burst (measured by seismographs as far away as the USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory) that damaged a lot more equipment then they are letting on. Now that they know how dangerous it is, I wouldn't count on them ever turning on the Large Hardon Collider again.
Re:Just a Cover Story (Score:4, Funny)
Remember there is a backup LHC. Why build one when you can build two for twice the price.
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Re:Why (Score:5, Funny)
Odd... articles on Slashdot aren't usually read.
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This is an even article. See? 1832238
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Do you happen to be a subscriber? If I remember from my stint as a subscriber, articles that are still only readable by subscribers are red.
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Of course the only was I have to pay is if by some miracle it doesn't destroy the earth, but does start working on that date. So, I just need come up with a back up plan to destroy t
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Re:Why red (Score:5, Funny)
The Large Hardon Collider [today.com] is designed to pump various types of hardon up to huge energies before banging them together. However, many concerned citizens without the personal experience or understanding of what hardons do worry at the idea of the large hardons being sucked deep into a black hole.
The device will push large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they clash and spray matter in all directions. "It's nothing that cosmic rays don't do all the time all over the place," reassured a particularly buff scientist. "It's perfectly right and natural."
Low-energy hardon physics and the temperature dependence of hardon production are well understood, as is the process of a hardon smoothly entering the nucleus. But some question what may happen at greater, hotter energies.
Church leaders have come out at the device. "They're the same polarity!" said Pope Palpatine XVI. The Church worries that strange matter may recruit normal matter and turn it strange.
After a premature ejaculation of gas, the Large Hardon Collider has been delayed until July 2009. "I'm so sorry," stammered a scientist, "this has never happened to us before."
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Right now all of the detectors are calibrating with cosmic rays.
I'll consider it an act of Divine Intervention when God uses cosmic rays to spell "TURN THIS SHIT OFF" on every detector.
Until then, let's fix this black hole device!
Re:MRI Quenching (Score:5, Informative)
That's not a feature, that's a side effect. Some types of failure cause the liquid helium to warm up until the magnet is no longer at superconducting temperatures. This causes a sudden resistance, which can damage the magnet, heats the whole system up (boiling off the coolant), et cetera. MRI systems generally have an emergency shutoff feature, the side effect of which is magnet quenching.
In this case, a quench is what happened -- resistance in the circuit caused helium boiloff, which destroyed superconductivity. They have many safeguards for this, as this was well-known before the first MRI or superconducting collider was built. Release valves allow the boiling helium to escape, and resistor banks are used to draw off electrical energy from the system. However, their system wasn't sufficient to handle the level of failure that occured.
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