Slashdot Mirror
LHC Shut Down By Transformer Malfunction
Ortega-Starfire writes "A 30-ton transformer in the Large Hadron Collider malfunctioned, requiring complete replacement on the day the LHC came online. No one at CERN reported any problems, and they only released this data once the Associated Press sent people to investigate rumors of problems. I guess it's hard to just sweep a 30-ton transformer breaking under the rug."
It's a big, complicated machine - shit breaks. It gets fixed. I wouldn't worry about it unless you're waiting for beam time.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
What with, you know, most of the world's population thinking that day was the critical "black-hole" day.
Whilst I'm sure that is beneficial for CERN in the context that most people will be completely unaware on the day that full speed collisions are truly started, I do not for one moment think the media had that intention. A publicised failure would only serve to increase people's prejudice.
I record my sleeptalking
Well that's great that you have that degree, but not everyone does. To people who aren't too familiar with that area of study or work, saying "30 tons" paints a much better picture in the reader's minds.
If you read TFA, you discover that it, but not the provided summary on /., says it was news to nobody in the field that something broke. What's not said here, but said in TFA and far more worthy of mention, is that they replaced it and were running again the next day, well before AP even inquired. Falling prey to the cheap journalistic gimmick of awfulism, are we?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I have been bestowed with mod points almost continuously for the past month(5 or 6 times anyways). Sadly, since I don't mod down, I have barely used them since the comment quality is nearing that of digg... Someone say something insightful PLEASE!
For those who only read the "summary" (I use this term loosely) and aren't familiar with the LHC you may be surprised to learn that:
this is not a major failure
there is no sinister cover-up
no one was ever in any danger
Thanks for some more fear-mongering doomsday garbage "news" Slashdot. The purpose of editors, at least for non-tabloid news sources, is to filter factually inaccurate and inflammatory nonsense, not seek it out.
It's a fairly standard measurement for mass, though. Transformers have mass, so it's perfectly applicable, especially when you are trying to underscore the massiveness of the piece of equipment in question, rather than its functional capability. If the person writing the article/summary wanted to underscore the cost of the unit, he might have measured it in US dollars. That's what journalists do: describe things in terms their readers might understand or care about. And most of their readers aren't pedantic electrical engineers.
There, fixed that for you. Also, turn in your geek badge.
Fixed.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
They really can't be called rivals though. Fermilab cannot replicate the experiments that LHC can perform and Fermilab probably cannot be upgraded to do so on a feasible budget. When Fermilab became the most powerful accelerator in the world (and it did find new quarks and what not because of it) it did not put CERN out of business and LHC is not going to do that to Fermilab (our own government can do that on their own).
...and I didn't realize the standard measurement for transformers had been changed to tons. Must be a European measurement?
I think kVA or MVA would be a better statistic.
when it stops working thats the only measurement useful
Its not called 'quench'. Its called holy shit.
The transformer malfunction was inevitable, due to the anthropic principle. In every possible universe in which the transformer didn't malfunction, the LHC destroyed the world and we couldn't observe that it didn't malfunction. :p
I mean this as no insult to digg, but the comments on the articles (and most of the articles themselves) are absolute shit. Most of the people commenting are - by their own admission - highschoolers and young college kids. With Slashdot, at least there's some pretense of being accurate and factual in the comments - users who troll or make ill-informed posts are usually modded down or corrected by other users.
In summary, I submit to you a summary of the current digg RSS feed as evidence of article and community quality on digg -
The above is but a small sample of the typical digg feed. Oddly, there aren't any "Marijuana will cure everything and it's 'big pharma' keeping it illegal maaaaaan" articles in the feed, but I'm sure those will trickle in as the day goes on.
:-)
Seriously. Digg is fucking retarded. Hang out there for a week and tell me Slashdot has approached that level of stupidity or redundancy.
No offense to digg or the OP, BTW
"You and your third dimension."