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LHC Offline Until Spring of 2009
It looks as thought the magnet situation that shut down the LHC last week is going to take even more time to correct than previously feared. In order to fully investigate the problem, researchers have decided to hold off a restart until sometime in the spring of 2009. Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN called the situation "a psychological blow," but getting this beast is in good working order must be the top priority. Apparently, the fire department rushed to the scene after a little over a ton of liquid helium leaked into LHCs super-long tunnel, causing around 100 of the magnets to overheat. Take your time guys—we don't need any more drama with a device that could bring down the world. [BBC]
lhc
One Billion People Tuned in to See the LHC Break
The CERN scientists said the LHC's big malfunction this weekend was the result of a "faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out," but we snarky Internet folk know better. It was performance anxiety! With more than a billion people tuning in to watch the first proton beams make their way around the 17-mile ring, the LHC just got a little potty shy. "It is quite overwhelming," said CERN spokesman James Gillies. "We weren't just on the news, we were top of the news." And now you're buried under a mountain of repairs. Get to work so the world can end already! [New Scientist]
lhc
LHC Repair Update: Temperature Must Be Raised so Repairmen Don't Die
In case you were still worried about the LHC bringing on the biblical apocalypse, you can calm down, because it turns out the Collider is going to be out of commission for a lot longer than previously thought. The “electrical transformer” problem wasn't the cause of the shutdown at all, and the real problem means the LHC won't be back up and running for at least two months. More »
Pranks and Particle Physics
Though the Large Hadron Collider didn't kill us when those crazy CERN scientists closed their eyes, said a prayer, recited a few theorems and switched it on for the first time, the secret is that it could have killed us. When they built the collider, the scientists installed a black-hole creation button. (The button is real, but it doesn't actually do anything.)
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Large Hadron Collider Has Black Hole Button
Though the Large Hadron Collider didn't kill us when those crazy CERN scientists closed their eyes, said a prayer, recited a few theorems and switched it on for the first time, the secret is that it could have killed us. When they built the collider, the scientists installed a black-hole creation button. (The button is real, but it doesn't actually do anything.)
More »
lhc
LHC First Beam Test Image, All Systems Go for First Collision Event
This is the first groovy image produced by the Large Hadron Collider, showing some of the first protons accelerated today at 1028h Central European Time (0428h Eastern Time), the exact time when CERN scientists successfully fired up the LHC for the first time. As we told you earlier this morning, this wasn't the heads-on collision experiment, which will come later in the year. More »
lhc
Large Hadron Collider: Why You Really Won't Die Today
Yes. It looks like we are still alive. The first ignition of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, is now underway and nothing has happened yet. But there's a simple reason for that, one that I realized two days ago and I didn't have time to actually write about until today: we got it all wrong. Everyone got it wrong.
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diy
Want to build the most complex machine human kind has ever produced? All you'll need is €6 billion, enough real estate to hold your 17-mile-long ring, a staff of international geniuses, and these plans (free!). The 115MB of documentation just made available by the Journal of Instrumentation has all you need to understand the inner workings of all the major LHC components, from the EMCAL super modules to the ionizing gas straw tubes to the calorimeter end-caps. And the schematics within are, just like everything else large-hadron related, beautiful.
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Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider in 1.62 x 10^28 Easy Steps
Want to build the most complex machine human kind has ever produced? All you'll need is €6 billion, enough real estate to hold your 17-mile-long ring, a staff of international geniuses, and these plans (free!). The 115MB of documentation just made available by the Journal of Instrumentation has all you need to understand the inner workings of all the major LHC components, from the EMCAL super modules to the ionizing gas straw tubes to the calorimeter end-caps. And the schematics within are, just like everything else large-hadron related, beautiful.
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Doomsday Watch, Sort Of
Monitor Large Hadron Collider's Magnet Temperatures With Real Time Status Website
Yeah, yeah, the Large Hadron Collider is in no real danger of accidentally opening up a black hole that swallows the world when it's finally fired up on August 7. We know. But still, we sometimes like to pretend it is, and this is where Cern's LHC cooldown status website comes in. Using it you can track the current temperatures of its 1600+ superconducting magnets in real time. But what should you be looking for? More »
to be continued
The scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have decided to delay the ignition of the massive particle accelerator. The LHC countdown now shows 30 more days, so you can enjoy July to its full potential. In case you don't know what a Large Hadron Collider is, it's the thingamajig that is supposed to find the Force that binds all things or—according to some morons—was supposed to kill us all yesterday. Wait, hold on a moment here. Maybe they activated it. Maybe the first collision created a white hole that sucked the whole Universe in, and we got back in time.
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LHC Ignition Delayed Until August, Earth Spared Another Month
The scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have decided to delay the ignition of the massive particle accelerator. The LHC countdown now shows 30 more days, so you can enjoy July to its full potential. In case you don't know what a Large Hadron Collider is, it's the thingamajig that is supposed to find the Force that binds all things or—according to some morons—was supposed to kill us all yesterday. Wait, hold on a moment here. Maybe they activated it. Maybe the first collision created a white hole that sucked the whole Universe in, and we got back in time.
More »
