LHC atom smasher temporarily smashed

William Atkins
Saturday, 20 September 2008 18:27

Science - Energy

CERN officials announced that its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be inoperable for at least two months while repairs are conducted after it malfunctioned and was damaged during its initial startup on Friday, September 12, 2008.


According to an online logbook maintained by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) project controllers, at 11:27 local time (0927 UTC) on Friday, a “quench” (failure) in sector 34 (which is located near Point 4), the final sector in the LHC, occurred during the commissioning of the collider, without a particle beam present.

The failure occurred between the ALICE and CMS (Compact Muon Solonoid) detectors.

Inspectors entered the 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel, which houses the LHC under the border between Switzerland and France, about a day and one-half after the failure occurred to examine the damage.

It first the CERN inspectors thought the problem was a faulty electrical transformer. It was replaced, and operations continued.

Further information is found on the iTWire article “Status: Large Hadron Collider after injecting Beams 1 & 2 separately .”

However, problems still occurred. Further inspections found that the damage was much more extensive than initially though to have occurred.

The failure caused about one metric ton of liquid helium to leak into the tunnel containing the LHC.

Read what CERN spokesperson James Gillies says about the incident. Turn to page two.