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LHC Offline Until April 2009 (Or Longer)
rufey writes "The recent problems at the Large Hadron Collider will now keep it idle until spring 2009. The official press release is here. The LHC went offline due to a suspected failure in a superconducting connection, which overheated and caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees. This resulted in the accidental release of a ton of liquid helium. The process required to repair the failed superconducting connection involves weeks of warming up the affected area from -456 degrees Fahrenheit to room temperature, and then several more weeks to cool it back down after the repair is made. The total amount of time to do this will spill over into CERN's scheduled winter maintenance/shutdown period, which is partly done to save money on electricity during the period of peak demand."
I can wait till next spring for the world to end.
Now where did that paper clip go?
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Now I'll have to wait even longer to welcome our new demonic overlords who were supposed to come out of the stargate that the LHC will create.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
I thought the absolute zero was at -273...ah, damn americans!
They are already here, and in positions of power around the world. Their reinforcements, however, will be late.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This remembers me "The ship will not hold captain!"
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
That sucks.
I remember reading an article on here talking about a theory in which a particle from the future could come back and shut things down. I guess they could use that theory for any kind of downtime though.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Great, so we won't have to hear more stories about the end of the world caused by black holes. Well, at least until the spring anyway.
This breakdown is probably just the beginning of a series of breakdowns. A year from now everyone will be complaining about the huge price tag on this thing that has never been 100% operational.
... the TV show Fringe. They turned off an MRI instantaneously and pull a guy out of it on last nights episode.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I spent all my money over the last 6 months on alcohol and parties, secure in the knowledge that the world would come to an end this October when the LHC came up to full power.
This is unacceptable. I demand they destroy the world now.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I believe with all the problems they're having, the actual date when the high-energy collisions begin will be December 2012.
Say something meaningful--the magnets were about 2 degrees Kelvin.
Do they actually mean there was a metric ton of Liquid Helium released, or just a lot? I mean, any liquid helium spilled, even jus a measly ounce, to me seems like a big deal considering how expensive and, well, cold it is. A whole ton? Seriously, is this an actual figure or is it just an exageration? Or is it even an understatement? I really have no idea.
Or something more sinister? Did they make a blackhole? Are they desperately trying to contain it before it destroys the earth?
Although really, if my ST:NG watching is any indication, coolant leaks are bad mojo in and of themselves. And that would explain why I was told to put on a red shirt this morning.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Holy FSM! More or less 31 weeks of downtime. Anyone have more details about the warming up and cooling process? I mean, how efectivly is it done and how long it take for each sector?
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
I understand things were going well - then there was this 'big bang'....
AT&ROFLMAO
the BIGGEST and probably the most important experiment ever conceived is underway, and they are being left to think about saving energy ?
if there is anything that world shouldnt be saving energy, if there is anything that needs to be subsidized by governments, this is it.
because, this is IT. if the god particle is found, the smallest block of EXISTENCE will be found.
im appalled how EU is not being of sufficient assistance in this. unbelievable.
Read radical news here
Say something meaningful--the magnets were about 2 degrees Kelvin.
you mean 2 Kelvin (since it is an absolute scale)
Hey old chap, can tell me the length in barleycorn's for this collider?
Last time I checked, LHe was about $5 USD a liter. A metric ton is 1000kg, and LHe's density is 0.125g/ml (wikipedia), which amounts to 8000 liters or about 40k. Considering that He is non-renewable, leaking out of the atmosphere, hopefully they were able to reclaim and recompress it.
They must be calling the black hole firefighters. as everybody knows this stuff grows slowly: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/black+hole+missing+link+found/2459102 "super-massive black holes were thought to grow slowly". Way to go, that'll learn us to put such a facility in switzerland where suicide rates are so high.
A ton of helium! What's the big deal? That's, like, way lighter than a ton of air!
[I'm being facetious about the weights, but in terms of cost, losing a ton of helium is freakin' expensive]
Look at the LHC cyro status for sector 3-4. Average magnet temperature is now at 70K, and slowly creeping up to room temperature. Notice the expanded vertical scale on the graph. Compare with the other sectors, holding with liquid helium at 1.9K.
Warmup is slow. Cooldown is slower. Several kilometers of pipe and a hundred or so magnets are involved.
It's not that bad, though. It looks like they won't have to take magnets out of the tunnel for rewinding. That's a huge job. This is just a slow one.
They can warm up or chill down sector 3-4 during the shutdown period. The rest of the system would normally be cooled during shutdown anyway.
Quit complaining about Fahrenheit, we could have said 2.7 Rankine.
I could claim that I was born before the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures and exhort you to get off my lawn...but I'd be lying.
I, for one, welcome the Higgs bosons from the future that successfully interfere with the LHC in the present!
Yikes, I'd be more worried about the liquid helium being released than making a black hole. You'd die awfully quick if your precious oxygen is replaced with helium.
Okay, I'm a born and raised American, and -453 Fahrenheit means nothing to me. Even us Americans use Celsius for science. If I read a temperature outside of what the weatherman could report, then a Fahrenheit measurement is just another number that I have to convert before it will mean something. (Let's see... being a former Clevelander, the weatherman range would be from about -30 to 110 F.)
Please. If it's science, give us our 'degrees C'.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
I believe with all the problems they're having, the actual date when the high-energy collisions begin will be December 2012.
That actually is appropriate, though probably not in the sense that P means. The Mesoamerican calandar that 'ends' in 2012 is just the end of a chunk of a calendar, to be followed by another chunk, and another, etc. It is like New Year's Eve for us; the end of a cycle and an excuse to party. 2012 is just an excuse to party, Mayan style, ripping the hearts out of human sacrifices or however they celebrate it.
When the first collisions happen, that will be grounds for partying also.
maybe it sent particles thorugh space time and they are tugging some giant galactic cluster toward it and in a giant wormhole it will all pop back here. /me gets some popcorn ( not from a movie theatre )
It sure is a good thing that they have 30-40 spare magnets.
To upgrade to XP.
Turns out one of the new particles forgot to get certified Vista-ready.
Not naming any names here (I'm looking at you muon-antineutrino!)
It was a mini black hole that eat through the insulation! No question about it... now it is busy devouring the Alps, then Europe (sell sell sell all your Euros, now!). It will then gradually expand and eat Wall Street (wait! it has happened already!). The world will come to an end before they can fix this machine.
http://www.starslip.com/2008/09/12/so-thats-what-happened-to-the-ssc/
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
idleispants!!!!!!
They will trun it back the day after the CUBS win it all.
That does not suck. But the alternative...
Ok, I've made a LHC black hole joke. I couldn't resist... Shame on me :(
Rethinking email
Real scientists use SI metric base units. And as everyone knows, the SI unit for temperature is... *drumroll*...
KELVINS.
you mean 2 Kelvin (since it is an absolute scale)
Or, for the rest of us, 3.0025 Libraries of Congress.
Well, the world is safe again... But... for how long?
I bet the LHC won't be fully operational until 2012. I'd say around December.
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
the paperclip (alluding to magnetism)... My initial thoughts are that this is a successful (achieved, whether or not the victims want it to be a) sabotage act. We already heard that crackers broke in but were contained or blocked. Often, thefts and heists are facilitated by insiders. I wonder which (if any) internal "agents" is a mole. Even just yesterday, having read the link about acts of internet sabotage/cyber attacks:
http://net-security.org/secworld.php?id=6554
I wouldn't be surprised if a US or US-sympathetic student or agent working on the scientific teams helped map the security protocols/topology and insert the mole. Why dare slam the US? Well, because we CONSTANTLY are bombarded with what appear to be outrageous lies about *China* constantly attacking (when "probing" might be the better description?) US military sites. The report/link on the attacks indicates that China's currently interested or succeeding in planting trojans/bots/mechanisms in less secure academic facilities. And, the US' Semiconducting super collider never took off:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94481272
So, who knows with unassailable certainty that the US (aside from risking losing access to treasured scientific Data from the LHC) wouldn't have tinkered with the idea of delaying or sabotaging the LHC? NOBODY! But, there could be other culprits, to be fair...
OTOH, if there are any Chinese nationals as scientists/workers there, i doubt they'd have a motivation for doing it. It's not as if they have a domestic collider program. They're busy with the ship construction, manufacturing, and space programs - and, i suppose, - if Crawl Street implodes, they will try to advance Shanghai or other places as financial centers, inviting in many of the brightest being purged or dropped from New York. And, who's to SAY (with certitude and factuality) that the US WILL AND SHALL remain the financial processing center of the world? NO ONE can.
Anyway, I bet any overheating or tube/ring failures will end up being reported as unfortunate mechanical failure. Even if it is sabotage, it'll be kept hushed to not help any attackers know for certain that THEIR act was the one that did in the LHC and deflated the short-lived jubilation felt over activation of the LHC...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I bet there'll be more delays and it will be fully functional on Dec 21, 2012.. By that time, i'll have enough canned food, bottles of fresh water and a little boat, sailing in the south atlantic :D
ATH++
My guess is that the first collision will take place this winter while it's supposedly shut down.
THEY don't want all the publicity when they start it up.
THEY want to control whatever powerful new technologies may come out of it.
THEY killed Elvis and Emilia Earhart, and hide the secret to cold fusion and the low-fat cheeseburger.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I wonder if anyone has considered the dangers of that much free helium. If there was a horrible accident at LHC if they called anyone their voices would be too high pitched to take seriously.
They will trun it back the day after the CUBS win it all.
Against Miami?
Yeah. Who would've thought? 100 to 1 shot! I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season, put some money on the Cubs.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
Q: What did one CERN Scientist say to the other after they collided their first particles?
A: What's the matter?
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
In this story a superconducting supercollider had a similar accident, although the results were much different. Good read.
Well, until they get this thing running again, they can rent the place out as the ultimate underground skating rink.
I propose in all the other parallel universes, the LHC is activated and destroyed humanity. Thus the one *I* am in, the LHC will never work.
I hope the repairmen don't forget their gloves or screwdrivers in there.
More seriously: the LHC wasn't designed with repairability/serviceability in mind, it seems. Before you mod me down: the proof is before our eyes!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It's easier to run the same test again, so the magnet-thingies warm up themselves in a single day.
Actually, the world ended when the Red Sox won it all, it's just that nobody noticed.
Wow, you got issues. Have you checked for spies in your microwave lately?
He had a baseball bat, and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do. - Max Payne
This is terrible. I may actually have to consider who I'm voting for in the upcoming US Presidential elections.... I DEMAND THAT THEY RESTART THE LHC... IMMEDIATLY!!!
(d) PROFIT!!
This is my sig.
I am dissappointed. We are on slashdot. Please say instead
"The results will be evalutaed using GNU/Hurd"
or "The operators could finish a round of DNF in the breaks" or "a microsoft linux running on phantom game consoles is used as a thin client operating system" etc...
NO Sports, please!
Give me my degrees Rankine!
And then I'll have a side of Kelvin too. Thank you.
But seriously, what about space suits? They allow people to survive in absolute 0. Why can't they be used?
Cubbies i thought...or am I wrong?
I thought they could, like, warp the firmament or woof the continuum or something. Can't they fix it yesterday?
Flamebait? Sheeesh, lighten up mods. Well, one mod in particular, I suppose.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Bah! Bloody Torchwood.
... it just keeps sucking down more money in repairs!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
(To the humor-impaired, that was only a joke, not a criticism)
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Actually, I'm pretty sure it was John Titor, come back from the future to prevent exactly that from happening.
This is why I moved to Cincinnati.
in many cases, intuition may be wrong. you shouldnt 'intuite' that rigidly in things you are not sure of yet.
Read radical news here
Yeah, but the shark still looks fake.
Sounds like weeks of fun ahead, mopping up a ton of evaporating helium, chatting along like a flock of canaries. No really...
The aliens put top priority into making sure that the collider did not come online and seed a black hole.
Interestingly enough, the aliens' normal work centers around stabilizing the worldwide financial markets. That work obviously suffered while they were preoccupied. It is taking some time for them to get back on track, too.
They are *quite* heavy in a gravity well.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Latest news is that they delay it until 2012.
The absolute zero of empty space is a much different situation than the absolute zero of the collider.
Conduction is a bitch.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Maybe they're too heavy?
How many spies can survive being in a microwave?
(Anyway, I don't own a microwave. Butt, if it pleases you, i'll report my findings after unseating and reattaching the commode...hehehe)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
For those of you who do not know, that is a Mark Twain quote (presumed to be, anyhow)
"When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The repairs are going to take a long time. A blck hole formed and time moves real slowly down there now. Good new is the technicians get paid in uphole time.
Squirrel!
Spacesuits operate in vacuum, which means there are almost no no particles around, so the word temperature does not make much sense there. Vacuum is an excellent insulator, so it is easy to keep them warm. It is a myth that you instantly freeze when exposed to the vacuum of space.
Open Source Alternatives
Because of the low particle density in space, a lot less heat is conducted away from the space suit. It's quite a different environment.
--anon
First it was socks, now it's liquid helium cooled super conducting magnetic insulators. What's next?!
Hey baby, I have a Large Hadron Colliding in my Pants, and it wants to look into black holes. Heh.
Space suits work in a vacuum - there's no convection or conduction, and therefore the heat transfer is very slow. If you are working with solid or liquid things near 0K, anything you use to work will cool down extremely quickly, possibly deforming and cracking or becoming brittle in the process. Aditionally, you'd have to be careful with any humidity in the surrounding air, since that will quickly cover your workplace in a solid layer of ice.
That particular bloke is from the Deep Time Agency.
Not the same. Space is warmer than 0K, and it is empty, so it takes a very long time to steal all your energy. As opposed to a LNO2 bath that would steal your energy much faster.
Can this explain the reason for the setback?
"the paper suggested that future effects caused by the production of particles, such as the Higgs, could ripple backwards in time and prevent the LHC from ever operating."
Space suits don't keep you warm in absolute zero. Space suits only keep your body from being unduly stressed by the vacuum of outer space, which, by the way, has very little matter and thus very little heat conductance.
Spread it around: Space isn't warm, and space isn't cold. Space is just not.
The whole world is laughing at you, you hillbillies!
When you are in space here around the earth it is not absolute zero because space is still kept warm by the sun afaik.
It is a black hole machine alright. It has sucked billions of dollars already.
You confuse the relative vacuum outside our planet's atmosphere with absolute zero. The difference is in the transfer of thermal energy. Vacuum cannot absorb heat and so the suit remains at an operating temperature, while liquid helium can absorb heat and cause the suit (and its occupant) to freeze.
For a practical example of this, try stepping outside into 40F/4C air. Brisk, no? Now step into a 40F/4C tub of water. Actually, don't, unless you have adult supervision to help you cope with the sudden shock.
The vacuum of space has zero thermal conductivity. Liquid helium at 1.9K has incredibly high thermal conductivity. That's why they're using it, and at that specific temperature - for cooling.
The US isn't even consistent. Puerto Rico has distance on the roads in Kilometers, and sells gas by the Liter, but speed limits in MPH.
So it's a giant ring, it's had heating problems?
It's acquired the red ring of death.
Exactly how much energy would a Library of Congress contain, anyway?
...the big bang shall sound and, and, and, em, the world continues.
I just got off the phone with one of the network engineers at CERN, they expect to have the whole thing up and running again by Dec 21st, 2012, nothing to be alarmed about here, people tend to read into things way too much :)
Spacesuits allow people to work in a vacuum, which isn't the same as an atmospheric environment at 1 Kelvin.
For one thing, you don't have to deal with conductive heat transfer in space.
I wonder whether the guys who hacked into the LHC a few weeks back had a better ride than the CERN guys want to admit???
to code or not to code, that is the question.
because in space there's no air around spacesuits so temperature only drops mainly due to human body radiation.
I say keep the temperature low and have the maintenance workers cuddle every minute or so.
Because in a vacuum there is no convection, and the heat transfer is much slower.
Don't you get it, people? Soylent green is us! It's us!!!
The
They are sweatting there in their 10 billion dollar bunker hoping that the LHC singularity has dissipated by April. If not, by breaking the news on April 1st they hope no one will take them seriously until it's too late to have the angry "told-you-so"-mobs torture them to the inevitable end.
You're right. And now we are both nerds together.
No, there's some truth to it. Shoot water into a vacuum. What happens? Ice crystals. PV=NRT. So, while you won't freeze instantly, you will freeze eventually.
What if it's a really hot vacuum?
You're right. And now we are both nerds together.
Apparently not a very good nerd, because you're wrong!
The guy doesn't say "cubbies" until McFly makes him repeat himself - and he doesn't say the "100 to 1" shot stuff the second time.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
you would definitely freeze, just not instantly. your body radiates heat constantly, your skin would freeze very quickly and you would be unable to move as your body tries to expand from the decrease of external pressure. the real question is if you would freeze to death before you would suffocate?
It's not sports, it's Back to the Future.