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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.
But all credit cards within a 10-mile radius were erased.
...and make sure there aren't any redshirts around the next time you install it.
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.
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/
"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.
...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
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!
...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.
I think the 2+ miles under the harbor was actually the most trivial part of the project, being completed well ahead of and opened earlier than the rest of the project. The real challenge was building the new underground roads and associated bridges, ramps etc. while keeping the existing transportation infrastructure operational (albeit in a limited form). They had to deal with building close to existing subway tunnels, dealing with soil that was all landfill, and hitting archaeological sites. The project was certainly wrought with corruption, but to imply that it was somehow inefficient by comparing the length of the roads developed makes little sense.
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.
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. "
Did anyone else read that as hardon collider?
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?
Hrm, maybe that has something to do with that the Chunnel is 2 miles of interesting parts and 29 miles of a simple tunnel? Not to mention that the Big Dig was a complete renovation of an old infrastructure while keeping the city running at the same time.
It's on a news site in the science section !
WTF ?so why wasn't this tagged "ha ha" ?
We're saving the ha-ha for when Switzerland disappears and the remaining crater is filled with a large strawberry shortcake with extra anchovies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Its ironic how you gave that example of a man trying to fix the brakes on his own, if it was not for people like him we would still be swinging from tree to tree. Not a bad life except that you wouldn't have the option of complaining about it on some internet forum.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
There are cosmic particles hitting the atmosphere with more energy than the LHC will produce. If the LHC were going to cause a rift in the space time continuum, these particles would have done the same in the last 6 billion years that they've been hitting the atmosphere.
"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
Nature has been performing experiments in our atmosphere for 4.55 billion years at energies much higher than we could hope to attain in a collider. If it was possible for a black hole spawned in one of these event to swallow the Earth (or whatever other nightmare scenario you've envisioned), it would have already happened and you wouldn't be around to discuss it.
Reference 1
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"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show