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Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the allright-which-of-you-got-the-A dept.

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.

23 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Forgetting... by mulvane · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

    1. Re:Forgetting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      So THAT'S what happens when you divide by zero!

    2. Re:Forgetting... by tuba_ranger · · Score: 5, Funny

      Isn't this the plot behind Half-Life?

    3. Re:Forgetting... by NormalVisual · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, those guys need to be sure to have a crowbar handy at all times when working on the system. Those damn headcrabs can get the tiniest spaces...

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  2. Re:Obligatory... by Eudial · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one, welcome our new accidental parallel universe overlords...


    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!
  3. Almost success! by AaxelB · · Score: 5, Funny

    The machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aims to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang, when the universe is thought to have exploded into existence about 14 billion years ago.

    "There was a hell of a bang, the tunnel housing the machine filled with helium and dust and we had to call in the fire brigade to evacuate the place"

    Eh, sounds partially successful.
    1. Re:Almost success! by cyphercell · · Score: 4, Funny

      hello operator?
      click!
      Operator, this is not a ...
      click!
      bob - Bill have you called the police?
      bill - Of course bob, they hanging up.
      bob - What? Call again.
      bill - Damnit bob I sound like a chipmunk, you call this time.

      --
      Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
  4. NPR Story missed this one by your_mother_sews_soc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:NPR Story missed this one by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative

      They mentioned how a particle zooming around in it would have the force of a bus

      Not really. The most powerful cosmic ray particles ever observed, which have are millions of times more energy than anything we can create, each have approximately the force of a thrown baseball. Perhaps *all* of the particles in the ring together have the energy of a moving bus.

    2. Re:NPR Story missed this one by HoldenCaulfield · · Score: 4, Informative
      The relevant quotation from the story on NPR:

      "It's the energy of a bus moving at a normal velocity," De Rujula says. So imagine a bus rolling along -- which has something like 10,000 trillion, trillion particles -- but transfer all that energy into one single particle. There will actually be a beam of protons; a whole fleet of subatomic particles, each carrying the energy of a bus.
      In other words, the grandparent just mis-remembered the story, or didn't realize how important the distinction could be when talking physics . . .
  5. Not a Dupe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't this the same story as from a week or two ago?
    While it may have the same message to you (Big Ass Magnet Fails on Fermilab's Collider at CERN), it's actually the result of an investigation.

    From one of the articles in your link:

    Fermilab will appoint an external review committee to analyze how this problem occurred and determine root causes and lessons learned.
    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 /. community considering how many people have been posting about the huge leaps in physics this machine was supposed to bring us ... hopefully another country will come up with something similar to keep this research rolling while CERN awaits repairs.
    1. Re:Not a Dupe by bockelboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I work on the LHC (although not a particle physicist, I talk to ones every day).

      If you had to explain it at an 8th grade level (as newspapers aim for these days), you'd say "bad math". If you are on a nerd site like Slashdot, I'd hope we wouldn't need to make that simplification. The story is a dupe. It is still the same as before - the assymmetrical load was not put into the requirements for the magnets and overlooked during four internal and *external* reviews. CERN had all the right data, and they overlooked that specific test too.

      There is a committee reviewing the case, and their findings will be released April 24 (tentatively). FNAL's goal is to have this not delay turn-on at all, although it'll cost some amount of money to fix. They hope the repairs can be made in-ground. The absolute worst-case would be if they have to take the magnets up to the surface to fix them; that will certainly cause a time delay.

      Right now, they suspect it's an additional cost, but not a delay for the November turn-on. That picture could get worse, but we won't know until around May.

      Lots of the world's top particle physicists have been on this project for many years; any country capable of doign "other" research is certainly already heavily involved with the LHC. The only possible project which will benefit from the delay is the Tevatron at FNAL, but we're probably 18 months from running the LCG at Tevatron levels (it will take *at least* a year to begin to get all the bugs worked out and tunings done to a multi-billion dollar system).

      One delay will be noise compared to the amount of effort needed to prove the existence of the Higgs.

  6. The real reason... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fermilab outsourced magnet design to Sony

  7. The Great Mistake of '08 was no accident by TheHornedOne · · Score: 4, Funny

    Haven't these guys read their Dan Simmons?

  8. Some real information by gvc · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    http://user.web.cern.ch/user/QuickLinks/Announceme nts/2007/LHCInnerTriplet.html

  9. Re:Proton? by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Funny
    Gaw-damn, what are we doin' paying those hare-brained scientists to look at pro-tons for?


    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
  10. Units? by Tx · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fermilab - USA. CERN - Europe. You guys did use metric units this time, right? ;)

    --
    Oh no... it's the future.
  11. They should have listened by aalu.paneer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations

    --
    where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
  12. suffocation by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:suffocation by Frohboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's been reported in vent failures when a magnet quenched that it rained oxygen; liquid helium is substantially colder than liquid oxygen.

      On a somewhat lighter note (since no one was hurt), an MR tech colleague of mine recounted the story (which I may be mangling a bit) of an intentional quench of an MRI at the facility where she worked previously. (I believe the magnet was either being decommissioned, or at least being moved to a different building -- regardless, they needed to release the helium).

      Apparently, they put out an announcement that morning (and earlier in the week), notifying everyone at the facility that the quench would be occurring at some specified time, and not to be alarmed. One of the senior researchers had been away at a conference for a few days, and arrived just as the quench was occurring. As they opened the vents to the roof and released the liquid helium, the suddenly-expanding cold gas shot up in column for a bit, condensing moisture in the air around it, before expanding out, and forming a wider ball.

      Needless to say, this researcher was quite shocked to get back to work in time to see a mushroom cloud over the building. :)
  13. Re:John Titor delayed by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  14. Time to get the eyes checked by jalefkowit · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  15. Re:DUPE by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?