Photos of the Damage To the Large Hadron Collider 106
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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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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Well you wouldn't want a Hardon in your Tract, would you?:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/72656781214715n4/ [springerlink.com]
('Preview (Small, Large, Larger, Largest)').
For more of the same ('This may strike you as the geek equivalent of looking up "arse" in the dictionary'), see:
http://www.badscience.net/?p=238 [badscience.net]
Why (Score:1)
is this story red?
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now it's not red, is it just red to alert people to get FP?
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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definitely not
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Sometimes they "leak through" to normal users for whatever reason.
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!"
Wanna bet? (Score:1, Funny)
I'll bet they get it working on 12/12/2012.
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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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21m$ 210m$ doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
The sooner they get back on track (geddit) the better
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Or is it right that we should be upset about both delays and over expenditures, even knowing that in the end we will both pay and wait to get what we want?
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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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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.
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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That's the funniest bailout comment I've seen!
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And that a was one friggin' big cat.
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And by another odd coincidence, other particle physicists took a detour into Wall Street, where they
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I disagree [stanford.edu]
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.
SSC & SDI (Score:2)
Once it became apparent that the original SDI project(s) weren't going to happen, part of the strategic justification for priority-funding SSC disappeared.
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"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."
Well, maybe the people at CERN should have diversified, and invested in a bank, et. al.
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Particle physicists mourn its loss, especially those of us that really dislike having to go to Geneva every summer (damned French language barrier!!!)
Re:Too bad Congress killed the SSC in Texas... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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We (in the US) could have had something MORE POWERFUL than the LHC here in the US.
Science doesn't justify the waste present in the SSC. The bailout has the virtue of keeping the financial system from collapsing. The SSC doesn't deliver 1% of that value.
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.
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Ok, that's perverse. But I'm on side.
When spectacular science fails, it does so in a spectacular way!
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When the rocket explodes on the pad, it's either cause there was a flaw in it's construction, or there wasn't enough computer simulations.
The explosion isn't supposed to happen with the powerful computers we have available to us now days.
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Obligatory link to story. [engadget.com]
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And when it does, it means we learned something really, really important.
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While I won't go so far as to say that the problems with the LHC are cool, I do think it is to be expected. The LHC is a highly complex instrument with countless sub-assemblies and parts. I am sure that every effort was made to model the interaction of all these parts but the truth is that no one knows how it will perform untill it is physically assembled and then put into use. To expect it to work without incident as soon as it is powered up is unrealistic.
Compare it to the design and construction of a mod
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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Sonic Screw Driver (Score:1)
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.
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For pity's sake, please stop telling people what really happened. We don't want to frighten anyone.
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.
So (Score:2)
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We don't need to rewire the whole system, only a small batch of magnets that received the bad soldering job. The rest are fine, and we now have better ways of checking the soldering points remotely (ie without having to heat up the other 7 sectors of the LHC).
The $21M covers all repair costs, including replacing some of the wiring in a batch of magnets in a particular sector. Actually, part of the plan is to use backup magnets (obviously double checked for this flaw) so as to save some time, but we don't
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But maybe there's been some new information since last time I checked. Any pointers?
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The "quick" option is estimated to give them (reduced) beam in late summer 2009.
The "serious" option involves fitting a new exhaust system to every section of the ring, and means that they'll miss 2009, and we'll be looking at 2010.
Good news ... (Score:2)
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MRI Quenching (Score:2)
MRIs have a feature called quenching. Where when there is a problem there are small heaters which heat the Liquid Helium to a warmer temperature (that closer to liquid Nitrogen). So you don't break your million dollar MRI. But loose a Thousand dollar supply of Liquid He
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.
There is a GOD (Score:2, Funny)
Clearly this was an act of Divine Intervention...
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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!
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That's exactly how it happened. There was essentially a spark that went through a helium container, causing the helium to vaporize (from its liquid state).
Liquid helium is what is being used to keep the magnets cooled. When the helium vaporized, it heated up. Thus, the helium vaporization caused several magnets to heat up.
There is no way for a superconducting magnet to heat up on its own because it's a superconductor; no power is ever lost to heat as there is no resistance in the wiring!
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That's exactly what happened.
Can't help it if you don't understand superconducting electromagnet failure modes.
Large Hadron Goatse cookies (Score:2)
In honour of the LHC starting up in September, my girlfriend made some celebratory cookies [today.com] ... of the Large Hadron Goatse. Note the gold ring.
Ah, but don't go home with your hadron [sonymusic.com]
It will only drive you insane
You can't shake it (or break it) with your Motown
You can't melt it down in the rain.
Pictures unviewable (Score:2)
The pictures aren't appearing in my browser. Unclear why; some CSS botch or attempt at DRM, I expect. Anyway, here are the actual picture links:
HTML 3.1 - it just works.
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No wonder they had a problem- they couldn't even build the thing in a straight line. All that money and they couldn't even afford a level?
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Fail. Get rid of your trailing /
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i wonder who squealed... (Score:1, Interesting)
New Scientist broke these pix, not CERN. I'm pretty sure i know who took those pix (not gonna tell!). "We" where i work have had them for a while, and have elected NOT to spread them around and allow CERN to put them up themselves. I guess someone decided to "help" them out. It is debatable as to the moral rectitude of this decision, but I could have put these up weeks ago and chose _not_ to.
As i understand it, the pictures you see are taken 5 half-cells away from the primary failure, or somewhere aroun
A month later... (Score:2, Funny)
"Well there's your problem!"
Thanks for letting us in on the details so quickly.[/sarcasm]
Adjacent Universe Anomaly (Score:1)
Electrical Joint Compound (Score:1)
Sad (Score:1)
Brings a tear to my eye.
So it ends, (Score:1)
Not with a whimper, Not with a bang, but with a chorus of high-pitched funny voices.
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Yo ! (Score:2)