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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!
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.
A year from now everyone will be complaining about the huge price tag on this thing that has never been 100% operational.
It's the Windows Vista of supercolliders.
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)
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.
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.
The LHC cooling circuit has something like 400 tons of helium in it.
One ton missing sounds reasonable.
The cold doesnt matter, btw. Liquid helium has a really low heat capacity and evaporation enthalpy. A dewar full of liquid nitrogen spilled will do much more damage than 10 times the amount of helium, even if the helium temperature is lower.
And helium is not THAT expensive. At least compared to the other costs.
A physicists analogy is that a LN2 costs as much as cheap beer, while L He as much as good whiskey, per volume... (I once used 2000l of liquid helium in a single week because of a faulty magnet that couldnt be replaced during beamtime. Although that was of course recaptured. I hope they have options to do that in the LHC cave, too, even though the initial containment was breached)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
So, if this is correct, we now know that it will work.
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!
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.
There's a guy running back and forth down the tunnel with a bucket of warm water...
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!)
They will trun it back the day after the CUBS win it all.
You're being unfair, but they have a plan.
They're going to rename it the Large Mojave Collider and prove that its just bad press that is making them look bad.
Naw, its too late.
Turns out McCain is Kang and Obama is Kodos.
You know its useless to vote for a third candidate.
No sig for the moment.
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.
Actually, the world ended when the Red Sox won it all, it's just that nobody noticed.
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!
But seriously, what about space suits? They allow people to survive in absolute 0. Why can't they be used?
You're not familiar with large scale industrial operations. Even a large boiler must be disabled for a week or so before reaching room temperature. You're not going to be able to bring that much material to such a low temperature quickly.
It's been a long time.
This is why I moved to Cincinnati.
They are *quite* heavy in a gravity well.
There is a war going on for your mind.
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
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
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."
I doubt that; rather it was designed as serviceably as *possible*. Which isn't very given how cold and how freakin' big it needs to be. The whole thing is an exercise in pushing the boundaries; it's hard enough designing it to work at all.
I am trolling
No, *real* scientists use natural units and measure temperature in eV - like everything else ;)
What if it's a really hot vacuum?