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CERN Releases Analysis of LHC Incident
sash writes "From the fresh press release: 'Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.
Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no one was put at risk. Sufficient spare components are in hand to ensure that the LHC is able to restart in 2009, and measures to prevent a similar incident in the future are being put in place.'"
When is there ever a guarantee when it comes to electrical? Things frizzle, large areas have no power, cables wear out, the list goes on. 2009? I see this being a long project indeed.
If one faulty electrical connection (out of several thousands I'm sure), can cause the "largest scientific project on earth" to stall for 6 months, these hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings will probably have to wait for as long as Deep Thought did (7.5 million years I believe) to find out that the world has already ended, and they should've stuck to 42
It's too bad that projects like the LHC will soon run out of funding as bankrupt nations concentrate on keeping their populations fed and/or preventing the overthrow of their governments, rather than burning issues like "what is mass, really, when you get down to it?". Of course glitches and malfunctions like this (and the previous ones) will only serve to put us past the point of possibly having been able to answer that question, but failing due to lack of funding.
How many billions of Euros have been spent on this project already?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's worse than I'd thought. They may have to pull quite a few magnets out of the tunnel for repair, and some sheered off their mountings.
There's a lot of energy stored in those superconducting magnets. A magnet quench, where superconductivity is lost, is a violent event, even when the electrical safeties all work properly, as they did here. The magnet heats up suddenly, and boils the liquid helium. That blasts into the vacuum insulation cavity, setting off further quenches in nearby magnets. The pressures were high enough to blow out relief disks (as planned) and damage the vacuum valves to adjacent sections (not expected.).
None of this is about the physics. It's all plumbing and electrical work.
Fools!!! Don't you see? LHC turns on, financial blackhole appears out of nowhere and sucks our banks dry! It's just like in the movies - it's the damned physicists, both at CERN and Wall St. Blood's on your hands, you cretins!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
What really happened is that the LHC destroyed the universe, but then put it back almost the same way as it was before, at least close enough that nobody noticed it.
"But," I hear you ask, "how could the LHC put the universe back together from inside a universe that, speaking rather loosely, did not at the moment exist?"
Well, an equivalent (from an observational standpoint) way of looking at it is that the LHC created a nearly exact duplicate parallel universe at the same time it destroyed the one it was currently residing in. However, it would be totally pointless to create an exact duplicate, otherwise how would you know you actually did it? So it ... left out a bit. Specifically the bit that was containing the liquid helium in LHC'.
It really is one hell of a parlor trick.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If their machine opens a gateway to hell, I've dealt with that before... I forget where.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
... officials at CERN reassured the scientific community, in high, squeaky voices, that the helium leak will have minimal impact on the LHC program over the long run.
Have gnu, will travel.
Was this.
Sig this!
Overhead capacitors to one oh five percent. Uh, it's
probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing a small discrepancy in... well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining sequence.
You remember - the unnecessary war of aggression, waged on false pretences, that most people* found abhorrent?
(*counting non-Americans)
you had me at #!