Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

World's Largest Supercooled Magnet Activated

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-watch-is-pulling-me-east dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention a C|Net article about the activation of the world's largest superconducting electromagnet. Switched on today at Geneva's CERN lab, the experiment is part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project. The magnet, called ATLAS, worked on its first start up. From the article: "In use, the magnet will be used to bend the paths of particles formed from the collision of protons or lead ions accelerated to near light speeds in 27km diameter subterranean contra-rotating circular beams. The ATLAS experiment is one of five in the LHC, and engages 1,800 scientists from 165 universities and laboratories in 35 countries."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Impressive stuff by Hyksos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've seen the magnet while it was still being constructed. Suffice to say, BIG is an understatement! :)

  2. The realy deep questions by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA
    the LHC will be the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and will be used to investigate why particles have mass
    It's at this point I realise how amazingly little I know about particle physics. In my ignorance I always thought that having mass was an inherant property of being.
    --
    init 11 - for when you need that edge.
  3. Shutdown by Detritus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How do you shutdown the magnet without destroying it? According to my rough calculation, it stores energy equivalent to about 500 kg of TNT.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    1. Re:Shutdown by Detritus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One situation that I was thinking about was the case of a super-conducting magnet heating up and losing its superconductivity. I've read about MRI machines suffering expensive damage when they aren't shutdown properly.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  4. Oblig by h2g2bob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It was as though millions of credit cards suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

  5. Re:Field strength and other detials by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For those not into magnets, 3.9 tesla isn't all that much - maybe bigger than a typical hospital MRI, but by NMR standards it is pretty small - NMRs go up to around 20 tesla or so, and experimental non-superconducting magnets have gone to 25-30T (or even higher for brief periods). The non-superconducting magnets aren't useful for NMR or a lot of other physics since they tend to fluctuate quite a bit - they use water-cooled electromagnets and a HUGE amount of electricity. I remember reading about one that heated hundreds of gallons of water per minute several tens of degrees C. The really big fields are created by using explosives to forcibly compess one of these large fields to get a much higher field strength, but obviously that is a one-time experiment that doesn't last long.

    On the other hand, this magnet is very large in size. High-field NMRs often have bore sizes measured in cm. A hospital MRI is much lower in field strength but obviously needs a bigger hole in the middle - the open MRIs for those who are claustrophobic are even larger.

    And that Atlas magnet would make a very nice MRI - you could stand up inside of it! I'm sure it is quite fun to shim the field though!