Gizmodo: particle accelerator

LHC's $21 Million Single Joint Failure is the Most Expensive Soldering Error in Soldering History

John Mahoney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:20:00 EST

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most complicated machine that was felled by a single faulty solder joint last month, won't be back until summer 2009 now, at the earliest—a few months later than CERN last speculated. And at what cost? $21 million in repairs. A drop in the bucket when the full $10 billion budget is considered, yes, but let's hope some of this dough is spent on a bit more magnet-meltdown-preventing solder redundancy. [AP]

One Billion People Tuned in to See the LHC Break

Jack Loftus — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EDT

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 Repair Update: Temperature Must Be Raised so Repairmen Don't Die

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

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.

CERN spokesman James Gillies explained, “"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out.” The specific section will have to have its temperature raised significantly above its usual absolute zero so engineers can go in and repair it without dying, which is apparently a very time-consuming process. This kind of failure isn't unusual for particle accelerators, but the LHC's internal temperature makes the whole ordeal much more difficult. Each warm-up or cool-down takes a minimum of several weeks, so the total repair will last more than two months. I suppose we've waited a long time already to unlock the secrets of the universe, so a couple more months can't hurt, right? [CNN]

Monitor Large Hadron Collider's Magnet Temperatures With Real Time Status Website

John Mahoney — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:30:51 EDT

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?

To do their particle-colliding business, the LHC's magnets must be kept ultra-cool—close to absolute zero in fact, which is a frosty -459.67 degrees F. And by the looks of it, many of the magnets are near operating temperature already. To keep them that cold, liquid helium is used, which is only liquid at extremely low temperatures. The highest temperature scale on the status website only goes up to 100K (-279.67 degrees F), so we're not really watching for "meltdowns" in the strictest sense of the word. But if the temperatures start rising to near the top of the scale, you know something is afoot. No doomsday scenarious, but still, feel free to shout out SECTOR 7 ARC MAGNET TEMPERATURES RISING! [LHC Cooldown Status via Bad Astronomy]