Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider 270
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.
It's Sabotage! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Super Conducting Super Collider (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, you are in the wrong place, parallel universe is the next thread down.
Helium is not friendly! (Score:3, Insightful)
Something smells fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Super Conducting Super Collider (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Super Conducting Super Collider (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
The linked article, which has more useful information in each paragraph than the entire original article from the story submission, is a little technical. Lemme try and simplify the important parts:
The magnets are chilled with liquid helium to keep the temperature near absolute 0. Some of the support framework which holds one of the magnets inside the coolant pipes ("cryostat") failed at 300 psi because the loads did not line up in a way the framework was designed to hold.
These conditions do not happen often, but they were known and were apparently overlooked by the engineers. Fortunately, the functional design of the system appears sound, it's just the design of physical supports that needs to be modified.
While the full cause of the problem is not yet known, failure to account for the asymmetric loads in the engineering design of the magnet appears to be a likely cause.Contrary to what the submission and article imply, the math was probably fine, but they engineered the design for a less stressful load than it actually experiences in the worst anticipated case.
Per common practice in large projects, other professionals checked their work, including the customer (CERN). Nobody else thought to account for this case, either. Internal tests did not naturally replicate the failure conditiosn.
Stay tuned for more news, while they confirm their failure theory and come up with a fix.