Transporting a 15-Meter-Wide, 600-Ton Magnet Cross Country 152
necro81 writes "Although its Tevatron particle accelerator has gone dark, Fermi Laboratory outside Chicago is still doing physics. A new experiment, called muon g-2 will investigate quantum mechanical behavior of the electron's heavier sibling: the muon. Fermi needs a large ring chamber to store the muons it produces and investigates, and it just so happens that Brookhaven National Laboratory outside NYC has one to spare. But how do you transport a delicate, 15-m diameter, 600-ton superconducting magnet halfway across the country? Very carefully."
Re:Cross country? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an Idea, why not move the Scientists? Greyhound bus.
Or telecommute?
They need to get *muons* into the ring, not the scientists. And Muons only survive on their own for 2 microseconds so even telecommuting [spreadnetworks.com] is out of the question.
Re:Move the people... (Score:4, Insightful)
As I mentioned up above, it turns out to be loads cheaper to move the experiment to Fermilab than to upgrade the accelerator complex at Brookhaven to do the experiment there.