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Serious Magnet Failure at CERN's New Accelerator
GrepNut writes "CERN is reporting that the giant magnets that steer the particle beam in the new and highly anticipated Large Hadron Collider have just failed catastrophically in a stress test, apparently due to a design oversight. It doesn't help that the magnets were designed and built by CERN's US competitor Fermilab." While safety precautions were followed, and no one was injured nor were any rifts in the space-time continuum opened, it's still a rather large setback for the project.
The part was destroyed and subsequently compressed into a singularity by the black hole that the device created.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
It's John Tidor's fault!
nearlygod
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
But all credit cards within a 10-mile radius were erased.
Scientists: Muhahahaha, that will teach those Europeans.
...and make sure there aren't any redshirts around the next time you install it.
I sure am glad you signed your post, because after reading such an unintelligent, innate statement, I lost so many IQ points that I forgot who made it.
The part that failed was built by the Americans.
The piece of metal that brought down the Concord fell off of an American aircraft.
American build cars stop running at 1/4 the miles of a Toyota.
Somehow these things have stopped being very surprising...
How many time do I have to tell you: Don't cross the streams!
Where would someone called Oddone work if not at a place that creates black holes.
Precautions must be taken to prevent an event that would tear apart the fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the ENTIRE universe. Granted, that's a worst case scenario. The destruction may be limited to merely our own galaxy.
I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone cause one!
GIVE OTHER PEOPLE see... The number of the founders of
Hmm.... sounds nasty.
Each of the ~1200 superconducting magnets is about 50 foot long. There's a photo here showing one being put in place (March 2005):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7119458/
Don't these people know the 6+ mile Boston "Big Dig" with only 2+ miles under the harbor has so-far cost almost as much as the 31-mile Chunnel? That they faked the books to hide substandard materials, it leaks like a sieve, and a chunk has already fallen loose and killed a motorist? It's just becoming an American tradition post-Challenger/Hubble/Star Wars that you got paid to do it multiple times until you get it right.
What were they thinking contracting one of the most important components to Americans?
"The failure does not concern the magnets or the cold masses themselves, but rather their assembly in the cryostat."
I know we don't read TFA here, but is it too much for the submitter to get past the first paragraph.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
"I am serious. And please don't call me Shirley."
...they're going to boost the mass spectrometer to 105% (for the extra resolution). It should be fine just so long as they follow standard insertion procedure...but you don't need to know that - everything will be fine.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
It's actually located in or around the place where
Help me Gordon Freeman!
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Fermilab has built electromagnets for many particle accelerators, including SLAC. They are apparently the only source. If you want something else, you have to go to TDK in Japan for fixed-intensity ceramic magnets.
According to an old neighborhood buddy of mine who is at SLAC, when he was in redesign of the linear accelerator in the 80s, those were the only two bids. For flexibility, they went with Fermi and electromagnets.
And they haven't failed yet.
While we're whining about cars, you can't keep headlamps and taillamps in a VW, wiring issues burn 'em out. nobody's perfect. that's why you negotiate warranties in the contracts for stuff.
no wonder you don't dare sign your name. which, BTW, is quite imperfect in itself. Can't stand on the courage of your convulsions, as a rabid right-wing wacko radio commenter used to say.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"...research associate Gordon Freeman pushes a crystalline specimen into the beam of an over-charged anti-mass spectrometer, the experiment triggers a resonance cascade, which causes severe structural damage to the entire facility and severs communications with the outside world, and within much of the facility itself..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Research_F acility#.22The_Black_Mesa_Incident.22
God does not want us to dig a hole into His universe! that's why the new accelerator will never work!
At least when NASA has a problem, they photograph it and show it to the readers. The lack of pictures, interviews, and names in the CERN press release is incredible. It is quite a different culture than we're used to.
...resonance cascade failure! :-)
The article seems to place the full blame on Fermilab's poor design. I will withhold judgement until all the facts are known. Did CERN provide specific requirements for asymetric load bearing capacity? If there were no requirements provided to Fermilab, then it would seem to me to be a problem at the CERN end.
The interesting part of the article was that the cryostat design was reviewed by CERN personnel, so the issue of asymmetric loading on the cryostat was overlooked by more than just Fermilab. Sounds like and "Oh shit - nobody thunk of that" moment.
so why wasn't this tagged "ha ha" ?
The forces induced in these magnets during a quench is obscene. Given the size of the LHC, I would guess that these are the largest such magnets ever fabricated. When pushing the envelope so hard, failures are going to happen. It amazes me that the public's quality expectations are so high for such work. If Windows was built to the same standards, it would have uptimes measured in centuries.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It's not my goddamn planet monkey boy!
I'll see you in hell Bucharoo Bonzai!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
LOL. it shows that you cannot rely on the americans.. hihi... We europeans are so much better ;) (just kidding, ofcourse this could have happened to any scientist, american or european)..
I am imagining that just before failure the fellow at the controls was muttering...
... She canna take much more of this, Captain"
"I'm Giving Her All She's Got, Captain
...is wrong. Should be the "Oh Sh*t!" department. Seems like the same kind of situation as when the Hubble Telescope was launched with the bad mirror and it's likely just as bad news for the forward progress of scientific knowledge. Says the article: "failure to account for the asymmetric loads in the engineering design of the magnet appears to be a likely cause..."
Sounds like it is a big problem, not a small one.
funny story!
Did anyone else read that as hardon collider?
A very close friend of mine worked for 30 years at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center designing their guidance system mangets. I don't think SLAC had any such problems.
It's the Doctor, paying a visit.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Anyone else reminded of the video game Out of this World when they read this?
*pines for the days of playing video games*
Brian Greene and his army of staunch string theorists realized their idea would be disproven and the Higgs would not be found, so they sabotaged the project to save their government funding.
that this thing can be refurbished and used as a chick magnet? I'm sure there are not a few /.ers that could use such a service.
Interesting how this came out just a day after the ATLAS software and computing meetings in Munich concluded. I bet there are some interesting discussions happening there right now among the attendees that are still in town.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
It's on a news site in the science section !
WTF ?Can't find your car keys?
Try looking in Switzerland!
Hey this is supposed to work in Europe...how many blonds are working on the site? Better use carbon nanotube superconductors next time! Better yet some nanotubes in the structure. Stonger than steel you know.
The researcher tasked with inputting The Numbers lost his faith and didn't press EXECUTE.
This is very funny.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
There is no CERN only ZULE!
i finished discomboobalating the energymotron...whatever.
It's a statement written by Fermilab themselves, yet it's anti-US because it seems to be Fermilab's fault?
They must be Democrat lefties, the whole bunch of them.
Sounds like Black Mesa's experiment in Half-Life 1's introduction. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Wow! CERN really DID invent a time machine as predicted, because this fake story from tomorrow got posted a day early.
Sig for hire.
Hey, didn't anyone ever tell you to keep your optics clean?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Oddone and Aymar will speak again at the end of the week."
happens when the unintended event horizon occurs.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I thought I saw the sky turn purple yesterday...
is the "Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain
Period.
Those magnets are the best they could make them.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Not only that, the RFID chip of my passport was erased as well :-)
Anyone missing PST files from last tuesday can use this.
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