LHC atom smasher temporarily smashed

William Atkins
Saturday, 20 September 2008 18:27

Science - Energy

Liquid helium is used to super-cool the magnets to 1.9 Kelvin above absolute zero (or, -456.3 degrees Fahrenheit, -271.3 degrees Celsius). In addition, vacuum conditions were lost, too.

Cern spokesperson James Gillies stated, on Saturday, September 20, 2008, "A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.” [BBC News: "Hadron Collider halted for months”]

The failure caused approximately one hundred super-cooled magnets to increase in temperature by about one hundred degrees.

Gillies states, "A number of magnets raised their temperature by around 100 degrees. We have now to warm up the whole sector in a controlled manner before we can actually go in and repair it." [Associated Press/CNN: “Large Hadron Collider down for 2 months”]

Gillies added, “We're investigating and we can't really say more than that now…. But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that's what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC." [BBC News]

Gillies stated that repairs will require shutting off the $10 billion LHC while the problem is fixed.

The CERN official stated that the damage was not a danger to the public but that it will be a costly repair.

According to the CERN media release "Incident in LHC Sector 34," "CERN ’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people."

On the bright side, the world did not end, as many critics of the LHC project predicted.

No mini-black-holes were created, and the Earth (and the rest of the solar system) was not sucked into oblivion. See UniverseToday article “The LHC won’t punch a hole in the Earth after all …”

The home CERN page of the LHC is found at: http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/.