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Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider
javipas writes "The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN has suffered a big explosion deep inside that has caused a leak of hellium gas and the quick evacuation of everyone working there. The reason: a mathematical mistake that affected the design of the giant superconductive magnets made by Fermilab. Now the company will have to repair and upgrade the 24 magnets that are installed on the 27 km. circunference of one of the most important research centers on Earth." This story might seem strangely familiar to you.
To carry the 1 can cost lives! I never believed it in elementary school when my teacher that math could affect my life, but damn, the stuff can kill you!!!! Treat math with respect!
Don't you mean
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Eh, sounds partially successful.
Talk about missed opportunities. I just listened to an NPR story at around 8:20 eastern time (US) about particle physics and the super collider. They mentioned how a particle zooming around in it would have the force of a bus, and colliding two particles would be an enormous crash. They talked about how particle physics has stagnated for the past few decades, about how the collider was built, and oddly enough, about what a breach of the coil would do. But no mention of an "accident." Hmmm. I guess I need to mail my pledge check.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
From one of the articles in your link: The old story was that stuff blew up. The new story is why it blew up so we don't make the same mistakes. Turns out it, was just bad math. It wasn't that we didn't understand some physics, it wasn't the gods being mad, it was just plan old avoidable bad math.
A somber and depressing article for the
Fermilab outsourced magnet design to Sony
Haven't these guys read their Dan Simmons?
What do you expect when using hellium?
What's so bad about that? Are they just afraid no one will take them seriously if they sound like the chipmunks when they report their findings? I mean, it's not like it's spraying O2 in the direction of the pilot light of their oven.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
This story has been brought to you by erasers. Don't make a mistake without one.
Here's Fermilab's statment. Of course they are an interested party, but at least their statement contains information, unlike the snide popular press article.
e nts/2007/LHCInnerTriplet.html
http://user.web.cern.ch/user/QuickLinks/Announcem
Just think how much money they'd be saving if they were looking at amateur-tons.
(With my apologies to Piers Anthony)
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Fermilab - USA. CERN - Europe. You guys did use metric units this time, right? ;)
Oh no... it's the future.
Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
We've lost containment of the hellium! Quick, we need a goateed doctor and a musclebound space marine from Phobos!
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
What's so bad about that?
What's bad is that it displaces all the oxygen in the area. This was a common cause of occupational deaths in MRI rooms- not flying metal objects attracted to the magnet (though a very small number of people have been killed by oxygen tanks and such.) An MRI repair tech was killed because of a slow helium leak that lowered the oxygen percentage enough that he passed out. That's why most if not all MRI facilities have gas monitors that monitor oxygen, nitrogen, and helium levels (liquid nitrogen is also used.)
MRI machines have vents for this sort of thing. Also because if the magnet quenches, a LARGE amount of liquid helium will boil off; all the electrical energy used to generate the field, which is constantly running in the magnet, turns very quickly into thermal energy. If the vent wasn't there, the room would pressurize, preventing one from opening doors (even an outward opening door- enough force would make it impossible to overcome friction on the bolt.) Magnet quenches are done only in situations where someone's life is in immediate danger (say, they're trapped by a ferrous object and about to bleed out) because of the danger (and the fact that there's a 1:4 chance of destroying the multi-million-dollar magnet and boiling off thousands of gallons of very expensive liquid hydrogen.)
It's been reported in vent failures when a magnet quenched that it rained oxygen; liquid helium is substantially colder than liquid oxygen. Shit happens: vent valves fail, birds nest in stuff, someone says "hey, what's that big empty pipe for" 6 rooms over and cuts it/blocks it off, etc. I think the MRI tech was killed because of a leaking o-ring.
Are they just afraid no one will take them seriously if they sound like the chipmunks when they report their findings?
Picture one guy yelling "Run, run! We'll all suffocate!" in a chipmunk voice, and everyone else laughing at how funny he sounds, and passing out. And dying.
I mean, it's not like it's spraying O2 in the direction of the pilot light of their oven.
Oxygen spraying in the direction of a pilot light in an oven will do nothing except make the pilot light burn at a higher temperature. It will not cause an explosion, because there's nothing else combustible in the oven, unless it's REALLY greasy.
What is not a joking matter is smoking in high-oxygen environments or fires in spacecraft, because they do have lots of flammable stuff, like wire insulation (which is fire-resistant, not necessarily fire-proof.)
Please help metamoderate.
As a result of the creation of microsingularities, the explosion has been delayed about a week while it time travels...which explains why the original article failed to mention an explosion.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...a leak of hellium gas and....
... oh wait.....
Jesus christ!
I'll make it simple: whatever the standard theory says, root for it to be wrong as wrong can be, and for the entire theoretical physics community to go on a rampage, ripping out and replacing things we've long held to so certain they were hardly worth questioning.
It's bound to be more fun that way.
Of course governments will be freaked that they spent so much money to prove something and failed to do it, but that entirely misses the point. What makes trying to prove our basic assumptions about the universe worthwhile is the small possibility that they're wrong in some fundamental and important way. I for one look forward to the day when some big shot physicists hold a press conference and announce, "You know what we've been telling all along about [perpetual motion/faster than light travel/anti-gravity/time travel]? Well, it turns out not to be entirely, precisely true." How cool would that be?
It'll be a big ho-hum if they announce that they've found the Higgs Boson exactly the way they expected with exactly the observations they predicted.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
On my first scan of the /. home page this morning, I read this headline as "Bad Meth Causes Explosion at CERN Collider". Needless to say, the actual story turned out to be a lot less interesting than I thought it would be :-D
Read my blog.
The universe, being rather on the largish-side, probably already contains at least two of everything possible within it, formed naturally through one way or another (such as the evolution of a species which is obsessed with lunch, and so designs and constructs the Free Sandwich button).
However, of the many infinite realities which do not exist, those in which Free Sandwich buttons were possible became filled with sandwiches soon after their initial springing-forth, nilling the potential for all other life, and so clearly the Anthropic principle takes over.
Of course, this is a flawed argument anyway, since as far as we know, and free sandwich button could probably not produce sandwiches at a rate which would cause a sandwich queue to expand at faster than the speed of light, and would probably collapse into a delicious but deadly black hole before expanding to reality-threatening magnitudes. I think the argument's concept is clear and reasonable, however.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Well, a week ago the accident propelled the collider into the future, and that's why it's being reported today. Sheesh, do we have to explain **everything ** to ya?
So Fermilab, CERN's competition, designed the magnets that happened to have a basic design flaw? Hmmmm, cue The Beastie Boys tune "Sabotage"!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Man, Goble rocks. He drives a car with the license plate UNIX.
Here's a YouTube link to the video. I don't think barbecue is the right word...try incinerate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBLr_XrooLs
:(){
So what science is going to get canned to pay for this fix?
This reminds me of the accident at the Princeton TFTR when it was being installed. The fusion reactor used huge flywheels to store sufficient power to operate the tokamak (without pulling down the electric grid). During installation, a contractor dropped one of the flywheels from an overhead crane.
To fix the flywheel, congress cancelled almost every other fusion research project in the country. This was when, for example, the EFBT project at NASA was cancelled - despite having results as or more promising than tokamak research.
(My plasma sciences professor at college had previously led the EFBT project; the story is repeated from him.)
I wonder what dozen other less-well-known research projects are going to get canned to fix this high-profile mistake, and what breakthroughs we'll lose because of it.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
This is why you never let Physicists do mathematics.
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