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LHC Repair To Cost At Least $21 Million

Posted by kdawson on from the black-holes-don't-come-cheap dept.

ThanatosMinor writes "September's quench at the Large Hadron Collider is going to cost CERN at least $21 million and delay future collisions until June of 2009 at the earliest. Enjoy your last few months outside of an event horizon."

2 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Pocket change by BlueParrot · · Score: 4, Informative

    The total cost of the is estimated to be somewhere between 3 billion to 7 billion. A couple of tens of millions will increase the overall cost by less than 1%.

  2. Black Hole Calculation by KiwiCanuck · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm guessing that /.'ers know that the LHC is not going to form a black hole. In case you don't here's the math. Mass of a intermediate black hole = 1000x the mass of the sun Mass of the sun = 332,946x the mass of the Earth Mass of the Earth = 6x10^24 kg Therefor mass of black hole = 2x10^(33) kg Mass of a proton = 1.67x10^(-27) kg The crushing force of a black hole is caused by its density, a large mass in a small volume (1000x the mass of the sun in a 1,000km diameter ball -> ~size of the Earth). So flinging around 40 or so protons in a 27km diameter tunnel is not going to destroy our solar system (or reshape the galaxy).