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Second Snag This Week Could Delay LHC for Weeks

sciencehabit writes "After a transformer failure earlier this week, the Large Hadron Collider has hit another snag — and this one is much more serious. As Science reports, 'At least one of the LHC's more than 1700 superconducting magnets failed, springing a leak and spewing helium gas into the subterranean tunnel that houses the collider ... How long [repairs take] will depend in part on how much of the LHC must be warmed to room temperature for servicing. If it's only a short section, the repair could be relatively quick. But the machine is built in octants, and if workers have to heat and cool an entire octant, then the cooling alone would take several weeks." Reader Simmeh contributes coverage from the BBC. We recently discussed the transformer malfunction at the LHC, which was a smaller problem and has already been fixed. Update - 9/20 at 12:52 by SS: CNN reports that the LHC will be out of commission for two months.

21 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. good grief by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    I wanna live in the dimension where the LHC works.

    1. Re:good grief by Metasquares · · Score: 3, Funny

      No! Don't you see!? This is quantum immortality at work! The universe in which the LHC works is the one in which WE ALL DIE!

      </paranoid>

    2. Re:good grief by DikSeaCup · · Score: 2, Funny

      I looked at a number of the early posts and didn't see this joke - hope it's not a repeat ...

      I just keep having this image in my head of two of the technicians for the LHC wandering through the innards of the thing, when one suddenly looks at the other and says, "Aw crap! A Helium leak!" ...

      Sounding, of course, like a chipmunk.

  2. Re:ohno! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It was another magnet eating black hole!!!!!

  3. Messin' up committee's schedule by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Milky Way Darwin Award Committee has to wait a bit longer before awarding the little blue ex-planet.

    1. Re:Messin' up committee's schedule by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh fuck off. Sick of you idiots who think that's funny...

      If you're not nice, I'll make pro-creationism jokes next.
             

  4. That's how... by doublee3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dr.Kleiner got his high pitched voice.

  5. Argh, Matey! by Panaflex · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thar she blows, ye scalleywag... doewn beluw deck she's spewin colder then the centre o' hell.

    Mark me wards... there's trouble brewing... somethin strange and black. Beware, I say... beware!!!

    --
    I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
    1. Re:Argh, Matey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      If there was such a day, it would be a silent day, as ninjas are stealthily silent until you are already dead. Then they secretly talk like pirates when nobody around them is left alive.

  6. Re:ohno! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    No, it was the strangelets. That is why the LHC is acting strange.

  7. That's a lot of helium... by Majik+Sheff · · Score: 5, Funny

    All I could envision was a bunch of physicists coming out of the tunnel squeaking like chipmunks.

    I have nothing to contribute but a cheap laugh and for that I am sorry.

    --
    Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
  8. the octant? by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    oh i know this level

    just beyond the dead space marine after you open the first door (watch out for the imp sniping at you from above) there's a false panel marked "UHC" (not "LHC") on your left. shoot that with your pistol and it opens. but shooting your pistol will wake a cacodemon further down the hall

    easy

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  9. Re:So what? by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not until they get it fixed anyway.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  10. Maybe this is just the Universe's way of saying... by stonetony · · Score: 3, Funny

    STOP!!!!!

    Is anyone listening?

  11. Re:ohno! by dotancohen · · Score: 5, Funny

    For the slashdotters who haven't yet seen the CERN webcam images of the leak occuring:
    http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  12. Re:sabotage by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd be surprised too, but not as surprised as I would be if it were really time traveling sabotage agents from the future sent back to keep the experiment that while uncovering the physics that allowed time travel to ultimately be discovered unleashes the hordes of microscopic interdimensional atom-eaters that munch on matter and defecate thermal neutrons. Because these molecule sized creatures (some say they are intelligent) are alive they multiply exponentially but though the early stages of infestation they were hardly noticed. But after some years their presence was obvious and our doom was sealed unless time travel could somehow save the world... These creatures entered our plane of existance through a wormhole opened at the LHC. The LHC had to be destroyed, or if not destroyed, at least delayed. T-100, a robotic facsimilie of a particle physicist, looking remarkably like Arnold Schwartzenpecker was sent back to throw a wooden clog into the workings of the LHC.

    --
    ...
  13. In Soviet Russia... by itsdapead · · Score: 2, Funny

    Universe destroys Large Hadron Collider!

    --
    In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  14. What does LHC Stand for again? by houbou · · Score: 2, Funny

    LHC = Leaking Helium Coolant

    Quite appropriately named uh?

  15. Re:sabotage by nospam007 · · Score: 2, Funny

    >What does it do? Ummmmm, yes, it will have the potential to reveal to us the HIGGS BOSON! Yes. HIGGS BOSON.

    Wot?
    All this money just to peek at Miss Higgs Bosom?

  16. Re:Give me a bag by russotto · · Score: 4, Funny

    Have you ever built something big, powerful, and complex? If you have, you'd know that "turning it on" is not a sudden point, it's a gradual process of implementation until it's fully operational, with hundreds or thousands of small, minor issues found and addressed as implementation approaches 100% complete.

    When _I_ turn something on, I set it up completely first, leaving only one final connection incomplete. That connection is made by an enormous knife switch, which I throw to the dramatic dimming of lights (managed by my assistant; my invention is of course on another power source entirely), sparks, and the scent of ozone. THAT is how you turn something big on.

  17. Re:sabotage by Walkingshark · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fuck, I can't even get Hello World to work on the first compile most of the time.

    --
    The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.