LHC Knocked Out By Another Power Failure 338
known_ID writes "The Large Hadron Collider — the most puissant particle-punisher ever assembled by the human race — has suffered another major power failure, knocking not only the atom smasher itself but even its associated websites offline."
I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Interesting)
Then why does your user name have 2009 in it?
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:4, Insightful)
Because his communication method is via Slashdot. He's creating a series of profiles, one for every year, that allow him to access and communicate with Slashdot in that time period. Duh.
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
Because there were 2008 mantises registered before him?
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
That's the year he was born.
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That's the year he was born.
Darned 8 year old think they know everything.
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Informative)
In 2017, they do!
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What do you think he was, born yesterday?
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
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He had to register after he traveled back to 2009 because Slashdot ends in 2012, triggered by a server meltdown from flamewars over an article about debunking 2012 paranoia.
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year two zero one seven.
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We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year two zero one seven.
Very Nicely Done [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'm writing this comment from 2017 (Score:5, Funny)
Your corporate overlord
Dreamworks
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My dreams only have advertising for Lightspeed Briefs.
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Lucky bastard. You got the glory assignment, while all *I* got was the mission to go back to 1967 and stop disco from happening.
Well, I'm off. Time for the brothers Gibb to have a little "Tragedy" at sea.
Descendants of disco (Score:2)
all *I* got was the mission to go back to 1967 and stop disco from happening.
Without disco, there would be no house music, which means no acid house, which means no trance. What kind of music is played on dance floors in your time period?
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Ha! History will not be denied. In the new timeline, "house" music is a direct descendant of Ken Kesey's "Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test)" and the prolonged and inexplicable popularity of a band called "The Grateful Dead."
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What do you want, a medal? (Score:5, Funny)
Ok!
http://www.slowpokecomics.com/strips/terminatrix.html [slowpokecomics.com]
Re:What do you want, a medal? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the most plausible explanation I've read yet for why Obama got the Nobel Peace Price, and it manages to maintain the prize's legitimacy! (such that it has)
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video of the event (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily some other website managed to capture a video of the event from the webcam's: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
Re:video of the event (Score:4, Informative)
And once again, the world is safe (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks to the efforts of nameless heroes, the evil LHC has been foiled again, ensuring the survival of earth...
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And Lead. Don't forget about ALICE [wikipedia.org].
Re:And once again, the world is safe (Score:4, Funny)
Zing! Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Future doesn't want to be discovered? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone remember this? [timesonline.co.uk]
Re:Future doesn't want to be discovered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but that was BS. Fact is, collisions of higher energies occur in the upper atmosphere with a much higher frequency than they will in the LHC, and have been for billions of years. The LHC iself is only expected to operate for a few tens of years by comparison.
Hard science is hard. There is a lot that needs to go right for this to work, and any of apparently dozens upon dozens of things can make it hiccup. No spooky explanations necessary.
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Okay. Color me stupid, but aren't there existing hardon colliders that function just fine, like the one in Brookhaven?
What they do right to get theirs to launch without all these issues?
As far as I know, the major difference with the LHC is scale.
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Okay. Color me stupid, but aren't there existing hardon colliders that function just fine, like the one in Brookhaven?
I'm not sure about any hardons colliding at Brookhaven. Hadrons, on the other hand...
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The energy of the collisions at the LHC is higher, plain and simple. You need higher energies to explore certain types of physics, and the best way to increase energy is with a larger collider. The size is a function of the desired energy, not the goal itself.
Re:Future doesn't want to be discovered? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a physicist or whatever sort of engineer one is to build a giant collider. However, this strikes me the same as saying "company X has 10 servers and they manage to keep them working fine, why does Google have problems? the only major difference is scale!" Well, yes, yes it is.
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Fact is, collisions of higher energies occur in the upper atmosphere with a much higher frequency than they will in the LHC, and have been for billions of years.
Well why don't they just build a cloud chamber up in the atmosphere then?
Wow, that sounded a lot better in my head. :-) Never mind.
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Yes, extremely high-energy collisions, of the order of 100 million TeV, have been directly observed. Such events involve particles eight orders of magnitude more energetic than any produced by the LHC at its maximum design potential. The first such ultra-high energy event was observed at a cosmic ray observatory at New Mexico in 1962, and there have been a few since, but they are understandably rare. More information here. [wikipedia.org] So no, I don't think there is any other explanation why the LHC appears to be getti
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"Maybe it was a birdy bread-bomber from the future," jokes Chris Stephens of the LHC Portal - referring to the well-known wingnut theory that that the mere possibility of the LHC unmasking certain phenomena engenders forces which act backwards through time to sabotage it before this can happen.
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OMG! It's true!!! (Score:2, Funny)
I just tried to create a particle accelerator in my garage out of some Pringles cans and duct tape, and I totally failed to create a Higgs boson. Stupid Higgs boson sent a ripple back in time to make sure my Pringles-can collider failed.
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Yeah, well, whatever mysterious force terminated all universes in which the power generator didn't fail, forgot about the backup generator! This was nothing but the tiniest of hiccups.
Who really built this thing? eMachines? (Score:2, Funny)
The "uptime" on this collider is worse than an application server running on Windows 3.0!
Large Hardon Collider *ouch* (Score:5, Funny)
We ourselves find it hard not to suspect the involvement of some pan-dimensional police force, seeking to prevent humanity acquiring parallel-universe portal capability before we're ready to use it responsibly.
I have devoted a large portion of my life to playing countless hours of Doom and Halflife, reading Kurt Vonnegut novels, and watching numerous reruns of Quantum Leap and Sliders... I think I'm "ready to use it"!
Oh, wait... "responsibly"... hmm...
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I suspect Kilgore Trout is somehow responsible.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Does Europe not produce competent electrical engineers? I mean, their plugs are so superior...
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly their superior plugs have lead them to complacency.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
At least they didn't measure the cable run in furlongs only to have the supplier deliver in bushels. Before the plug fell out of the wall.
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Ever heard of Joseph Lucas, Prince of Darkness?
That's why the Brits drink warm beer--Lucas makes the refrigerators!
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Um. It's the UK that has superior plugs. If only they'd had the common sense to build the damned thing in Scotland like I told them, it wouldn't keep having all these failures.
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You do realise that the UK is in Europe, right? It's even been a member of the European Union for 36 years.
Obviously, since these are supposed to be the best minds of Europe building this thing, and obviously since the UK plugs are supposed to be the best in the world (even though they had to compare their's to gimped US plugs and not standard 3-prongs to achieve that), they should obviously be using UK plugs for the LHC.
That the UK plugs failed (and failed, and failed, and failed) shows the inherant weakn
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Compared to Fermilab? (Score:5, Insightful)
Minor inconvenience (Score:5, Informative)
"Diesels cut in OK" noted the controllers, adding that the Meyrin site is now drawing limited grid power from an alternative connection via the Prevessin site. The boffins don't anticipate resuming operations until at least 12:00 local time today.
So it was just a temporary glitch. Move along people, nothing to see here...
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Move along people, nothing to see here...
OMG, people from the future have vaporized the Large Hadron Collider?!
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> OMG, people from the future have vaporized the Large Hadron Collider?!
Those bastards!
Re:Minor inconvenience (Score:5, Funny)
The Future (Score:2)
What's that widget? (Score:2)
Anyone know what that fried out component is in the picture on TFA?
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Looks like an insulator bushing... (Score:4, Informative)
which flashed over. They don't actually what the bushing is ATTACHED to, which could be almost anything. Such bushings are the standard terminal connections on HV switchgear such as transformers, capacitors, reclosers, etc. The bushing itself is most likely replaceable individually, though.
Hopefully, it just flashed over from foreign debris (another baguette?), and did little damage except to itself. Such a flashover should have tripped upstream circuit breakers, resulting in the power outage.
Re:What's that widget? (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone know what that fried out component is in the picture on TFA?
I'm pretty sure it's Amy Winehouse
I could be wrong, though
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Looks like a cable termination inside a switching station.
http://www04.abb.com/global/gad/gad02007.nsf/0/BB71704EAD5AFA9AC12574F90052BE30/$File/Termination_SOT242_244-1_244-3_PB_Kabeldon_720.jpg [abb.com] for a similar picture.
John Titor's fault (Score:4, Informative)
he needed a replacement miniature black hole for his suitcase-time-machine
Did we just slashdot the LHC? (Score:3, Funny)
Oops!
I FOUND IT! (Score:2)
http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=higgs+boson [google.com]
Does this mean I get $6 billion?
If it was (Score:2)
Now, if it was Google running it, they would just have said it was a beta and not a big deal.
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Sabotage? (Score:4, Funny)
I Can't Stand It I Know You Planned It
I'ma' Set It Straight This Watergate
I Can't Stand Rockin' When I'm In Here
'Cause Your Crystal Bal Ain't So Crystal Clear
So While You Sit Back And Wonder Why I Got This Fuckin' Thorn In My Side
Oh My God It's A Mirage
I'm Tellin' Y'all It's Sabotage
So many people want the LHC to fail or stop so it won't "destroy the world, hur hur hur" so is it possible someone has been sabotaging it from the inside or even outside?
Janitorial services revealed as the culprit (Score:2, Funny)
This just in.... LHC had an abrupt power failure.
Our field reporter at CERN is providing his update..... "Well at first we thought we had yet another problem with the LHC." reports a source who wishes to be anonymous. "Well, we are now pretty sure it was just Ed. Ed comes in on Wednesdays to clean up in the Lab. Soon as he plugged in that damn hoover all the breakers tripped."
So there you have it, a hoover and $39.95 breaker brought it all the a halt today. :)
Is this a good thing to happen now? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to wonder, is it better that these glitches and outages are happening now rather than later?
What would happen if the LHC gets up to full capacity, THEN has a system-killing power outage? Does the LHC shut down gracefully, or could it be a disaster waiting to happen?
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There are countless backup generators and numerous failsafes that will safely redirect the beam into one of the many beam dumps, which are basically big blocks of concrete.
The worst that can happen: all of the failsafes fail, backup generators fail, and the LHC damages itself, requiring several years of repairs. That's the biggest disaster that the LHC could possibly ever produce. Keep in mind, it's already 100 meters underground, a length through which the particle beam couldn't penetrate even if it some
Here's a solution for the problem (Score:3, Funny)
Why don't the scientists modify the phase variance or reverse the polarity? It seems to work every time something goes wrong in Star Trek......
Douglas Adams knows why... (Score:3, Funny)
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
what's wrong with these guys? (Score:3, Funny)
i mean, how hard can it be to run a large hadron collider anyways? like changing the oil in your car! sheesh
Re:Live Report (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Live Report (Score:5, Funny)
It's broke - (Score:2)
Patience [slashdot.org]
Yea let's hope the science will begin in January/February like YOU claim. Though the people who run LHC said late 2010.
Re:HEY DOUCHE CMDRTACO -- atomsmasher IS NOT A WOR (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:HEY DOUCHE CMDRTACO -- atomsmasher IS NOT A WOR (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HEY DOUCHE CMDRTACO -- atomsmasher IS NOT A WOR (Score:5, Funny)
Careful now, that line of thinking is how we ended up with words like:
Hey hey... no need for profanity.
Re:HEY DOUCHE CMDRTACO -- atomsmasher IS NOT A WOR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take it easy people ... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the most complicated and precise piece of engineering ever created. Yeah, it's touchy.
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...Yes, it cost $6b.
To put this in perspective, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle program cost $5.6b, and the resulting machine sucks.
Which is the bigger waste?
M-
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how much did it cost. Let me see here (Checks Popular Science) ... $6 BILLION! WTF?!
It's still money better spent there than on wars of occupation, bailing out reckless investment banks, etc.
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of course, accounting for time dilation because of the speed and energy of the p articles
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Why is this "funny"?
All the bagel jokes were used up in TFA ... I only assume neither author nor mods actually read it.
Welcome to slashdot...
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The article made one bagel joke about the future.
I made a different bagel joke about bilking people for a 6 billion dollar upgrade. Funny is very subjective. To each their own.
However, I was under the impression that reading TFA is strictly forbidden on /. Anything that is worth knowing can be gleemed from the unerring wisdom of the discussion threads.
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Alew (Score:3, Insightful)
Say snotty engineers that cant do shit right
Hey, the damage was on a surface electricity line. Which was most likely installed by the power company running that part of the grid. I am sure no scientist bothered to work on it.
Re:engineers vs. scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Academics don't even see failure like this as a bad thing
That's just not true. An experiment that provides data is never a failure. An experiment that does not provide data due to technical problems is a failure. It's a waste of time and resources, scientists hate that.
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Yes, because I'm sure no engineers worked on the LHC. The whole thing was built by a bunch of theoretical physicists. ::rollseyes::
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That's not quite true.
Experimental accelerator physicists (not particle physicists) will come up with a conceptual design for the machine that fits the particle physicists requirements, and they will then work with engineers to design and build it.
Most of the designing and building is done by properly qualified engineers, not scientists.
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At least it didn't divide the world into a red half and a blue half.
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Yeah, it's worse than that -- many of the structural elements are made of steel, smelted, cast, and machined using processes that go back even further than Diesel.
OMG y dont we kill these jiants insted of stand on there sholdiers!
If you think that's bad, the guys using the LHC are Homo Sapiens. That's like 200000 years old, it should be run by iPhones, or something...
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No, it's not. There is a ton of things out there, even in the furthest, most desolate parts of space. The cosmic microwave background is about 2.75K and is pervasive throughout the universe, for instance.