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Earliest LHC Restart Slated For Late Summer 2009
gaijinsr writes "The damage done in what CERN calls the 'S34 Incident' (and what other people call a major explosion in the cryogenics system) is much more serious than originally admitted: The earliest possible restart date is late summer next year, but with some proposed improvements to avoid repetitions of the incident, it looks more like 2010. They kept this pretty quiet up to now, not the kind of information policy I would expect from CERN."
The universe is saved for a couple of more years! Now's the time to form our new national holiday "Beat the Hell out of the Atheist Murderous Universe-destroying Physicists Day".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The current fortune cookie at the end of pages is somehow very fitting:
" The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. -- Sagan"
I bet the first time it is actually used in a full power experiment will be December 21, 2012.
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They kept this pretty quiet up to now, not the kind of information policy I would expect from CERN.
Ummmm, perhaps scientists don't like to make statements that they aren't reasonably sure of? If there were still some disagreement or doubt about this timetable, I would fully expect them to keep it internal, and would be disappointed if they made a public statement prematurely. It's not like this timetable is exactly time critical today or anything...
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
The LHC has been longer in development than the WWW exists (there are screenshots around from the "first website ever" that had design drawings of the atlas detector on it.
It has happened. They got to fix it, piece by piece. Do you really need a "what cf flanges we replaced today" blog?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Most likely cause : an electric arc due to rupture of the interconnection. Unfortunately this is difficult to prove, since the whole dipole interconnect was 'vaporised' during the event!
Keep in mind all information coming out of there has to escape the black hole's pull.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I once worked at on the LHC at CERN and still have some contacts there and in a couple of conversations have come across some rather interesting bits of information. The fault has been isolated to a single connector, however the analysis was rather difficult as a large amount of the suspect conductor was vaporized by the current surge. The wires are supposed to carry 8,700-Amps!!! at full power, the intrinsic resistance in this particular bad joint caused some localized heating which then caused a portion of the conductor to no longer be superconducting. all of the current then passed through a sudden, unexpected load and voile, lots of heat, boiling helium and a chain reaction of nastiness. Looks like the pressure discs ruptured as expected, but they were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of boiling Helium, 6-Tons!, and the vacuum vessel buckled and ruptured causing other magnets to quench. the sheer force of the expansions knocked more than 20 of these steering magnets off of their supports. Slightly more problematic then first reports indeed. There was always an expectation of shutting down the beam for the Winter as the cost of electricity for the experiment is a major operational consideration and rises prohibitively for the experiment during peak heating season. Hope that they can fix their problems and catch any other flaws before they attempt to ramp up again. Here's to the exploration of fundamental principles.
it just heated up too fast and expanded too quickly. ~:-)
The beam would make a good weapon (if the LHC a bad weapons system).
The beam was 200 MJoules, the equivalent of 48 kilo's of TNT. That's a pretty good bomb if it should hit you.
(Note that there are 2 beams; it is not clear to me if that is the energy per beam on in total.)
Your faith in the openness and transparency of government boondoggles is touching.
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Gordon Freeman, ladies and gentlemen. Put your hands together.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
The repairs will actually be done a little sooner, but they pushed back the release date so they wouldn't have to fight with Star Trek, Transformers, or Harry friggin Potter. Just be lucky Iron Man is waiting until 2010 or we'd never get any sciencing or universe imploding done.
-=Bang Bang=-
I wonder what the event would have looked like in the tunnel when that helium escaped. I'm sure things got pretty frosty in that section of the tunnel. Does anyone have photos of the damage?
Namaste
The initial cause of the incident was probably a bad weld in a busbar joint. But they'll never know; the entire busbar was vaporized when it lost superconductivity under load.
The quench protection system wasn't designed to properly handle a failure of the superconducting busbar between two magnets. There's an elaborate system to dump the energy from a magnet that's starting to lose superconductivity into a big resistor bank. They expected occasional problems within the magnet windings, but this failure wasn't in a winding. The quench system is being redesigned.
The cryogenic system needs many more pressure relief valves. In this event, 6 tons of liquid helium was vaporized, which is 30,000 cubic meters at 1 atmosphere. That much helium couldn't get out of the existing relief valves fast enough, sizable parts of the plumbing were damaged, and magnets were pushed off their mounts. Now that was just bad pressure-vessel design. They should have had enough relief valves or rupture discs for the worst-case scenario. That would have localized the problem. Given the huge amount of energy in the magnets, in close proximity to liquid helium, in an experimental machine, this could not be a totally unexpected possibility.
More relief valves are going in, which means the whole ring has to be brought up to room temperature and atmospheric pressure for plumbing work. Then the whole commissioning process has to be repeated, which takes months.
The tunnels are empty of people when power is on, because if all that helium vents, the air is unbreathable. But this event was big enough that it could have affected people in experiment halls at tunnel level. If this had happened during actual use, people could have been killed.
A magnet quench isn't supposed to be a big deal. Early design specs said that restarting after a magnet quench should only take a few hours. Oops.
They need to postpone it to 2012. That way we can double up on our doomsday.
God's design team tried to tell him the same thing after he insisted on creating man, and that worked out OK, didn't it?
I work on one of the LHC experiments, so I'm posting anonymously.
1) CERN's communication has been lacking. Especially in deleting reports immediately after the incident on their eLog that had been open. That was a black eye on their image.
2) Plans change as more information comes in, so no one should be surprised by initial statements saying "The earliest possible date is several months" (which would be the case if no magnets needed replacing) followed by Spring '09 if everything goes well. This is now followed by Summer '09 to just repair the problems and late '09/ early '10 if remedial actions are taken.
3) CERN is changing directors in a month or so. The new director will make the decision of cautious startup vs. remediation and more aggressive startup. My expectation is the latter.
The world can wait an extra year for these results. I feel bad for the students and post-docs who are waiting for the data to emerge, though.
"but with some proposed improvements to avoid repetitions of the incident, it looks more like 2010." RTFS. I personally shall beat up two physicists on that holiday (starting with my physics teacher if you could call him one).
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Not really.
I've got my crowbar. Bring it on.
This fits exactly with all released information about the incident.
What, did you just look at 50+ pages and say "aHA it worse!"
Moron.
They will do a limited firing in 2009, possibly with no beam.
This makes sense becasue that can't run during the winter.
Well they could, but Geneva wouldn't be habitable!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm waiting for it to be delayed until 2012 and for people to flip out in a way not seen since "The Great Disappointment." We have a few years for people to build their bunkers before CERN starts back up. In all seriousness though, I can't wait for it to be turned back on, every day it's delayed is just delaying possible breakthroughs in science.
It is almost as if this scientific project fell under an evil magical curse.
LHC is obviously a doomsday machine. Turning it on will immediately destroy humankind in all the parallel universes where it works. Therefore, in the universes where we stay alive, we will always see it fail. The failure proves the parallel structure of the universe.
While most of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere admittedly, can we please reduce the ambiguity by referring to an approximate date (e.g. August 2009) instead of the season?
"S34 Incident" stands for either "Black Mesa Incident" or "Judgement Day. Pick one.
To repair the problem and get operational as soon as possible was the answer to the first time given. The longer time frame is to modify the design to prevent this failure from happening again. If they went the first option, if this ever happened again, it would again be months to repair it (and the failure could kill people). The longer time frame will change a design consideration so that if this happens again, they could possibly be back operational within hours at no risk to people.
I would guess that as they gathered more information and discussed the options, they leaned more towards the second option, but the time frame for the first was already released. It isn't that they are modifying what broke and what it would take to fix it, but that they changed their minds about fixing only vs fix plus prevention.
Learn to love Alaska
I bet it gets released right when the world ends.
I work on the LHC experiments as well, so I'm posting anonymously, too.
1) The failure of the flux capacitor was actually the real cause of the shutdown (although this will never be released due to the humiliation that would be heaped upon them for such a simple mistake - see below).
2) Apparently no one told them that when you accelerated it beyond 88 mph (within the limit of their test runs) it would create a hole in time/space through which a moderately-priced novelty sports car (or something of equivalent mass) could travel.
3) They are currently searching 1985, 1955, and 1885 for the components that they lost as a result of the failure. They also plan to search 2015. Eventually.
4) They are currently in contract negotiations with Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd and various other experts in the field. They expect that once the contracts are finalized the solution will be achieved between 108 and 118 minutes.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
i was all ready for the interdimensional warp that would teleport the world !!
Read radical news here
What are you blabbering about? The failure of the LHC proves absolutely nothing about the validity of the many-worlds interpretation, and you're trying to apply the anthropic principle (misinterpreted) to an unsuitable situation.
A huge black hole,
... in the world.
for MONEY.
Not trolling, just watching. Wow. I've said it before, I'll say it again. They have the best grant writers
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
I mean come on ....calling it the S34 incident is just begging for a cheasy sci-fi flick to be made about it.
CERN calls it the 'S34 Incident'
Other's call it a major explosion in the cryogenics system
I say the gates of hell have been opened
This Fall
Prepare to Collide with this seasons blockbuster...
S....3....4
This film is not yet raited.
Well, considering the LHC and Europe are both in the Northern Hemisphere...
There was a joke, you missed it.
Damn it, how am I supposed to know I'm meant to laugh if it isn't modded +5 Funny? Do you job, mods!!
It's so obvious now.
The Higgs Boson was a front. The LHC is a prototype of the hardware intended to run Duke Nukem Forever.
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
I predict that the LHC won't be fired up for real until 2012.
One of the critical attributes of a joke is "being funny".
I wouldn't classify that as a joke.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Do you actually believe that incoherent, illogical, unscientific, unprovable baloney?
Yes, and we'll have to wait for service pack 2 before it's really stable.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
With the current financial crisis I doubt they are going to fix until 2010.
New Economic Perspectives
Pity the guy who did the dodgy soldering when he gets the repair bill !
Smivs on the intertubes!
CERN is nothing to do with the USA.
They kept this pretty quiet up to now, not the kind of information policy I would expect from CERN
I think the explanation is straightforward: this is a very complex system, not only to build and run, but also to figure out why things went wrong. The modern day public are used to a media circus, where we follow events as closely as possible - but heavily edited for whatever pseudo-drama can be wrung out of it, to make it look like a soap-opera or a "reality" tv show. One can't blame them for not buying into that - they just want to figure out what went wrong, repair things and get on with research; they are scientists, not media whores or celebrities (but I repeat myself).
Once you start living life on the front pages, your every action gets scrutinised by journalists and the public, none of whom know anything about the matter at hand, and they all have their opinions that they insist to bother you and everybody else with. All this does is take your attention away from repairing things and getting back to doing important research. I have no doubt that the managers in charge have all been thoroughly informed and that they have decided not to go public until they have discovered all the facts.
Karma whoring link
Mod parent Funny :p
"The damage done in what CERN calls the 'S34 Incident' (and what other people call a major explosion in the cryogenics system)..." If that way of beginning the story was supposed to be funny, didn't work at all for me.
Europe is in the Northern hemisphere, and so the seasons are the same as North America. Therefore, Summer would refer to the period from around June to August.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Would *you* really let someone dumb enough to brag about the black hole machine suddenly exploding catastrophically the first time it was turned on to the uneducated (and easily panicked) masses back at the controls for another try?
8==8 Bones 8==8
The LHC is really a giant Higgs-Boson trap, designed to appeal to the lonely H-B wandering about the universe, friendless, mateless, and now clueless as to what CERN plans to do with (him). Parades, TV Shows, maybe a little song and dance routine, and possibly a book deal is potentially in the works....
Impetuous! Homeric!
GNU Hurd FTW !
Cool, it'll be up and running by the end of February then. Roll on LHC!
We'll soon have enough firepower to destroy an entire planet!
We grow tired of asking. Where is the Rebel Base?
Why? It's not a security vulnerability affecting your computer, so there's no particular security-related reason for you to urgently need to know when the LHC will be online again. It therefore makes perfect sense for them not to offer minute-to-minute updates. It's more appropriate for them to adhere to standards for dissemination of scientific information, which includes waiting until they have something fairly definitive to announce, rather than a bunch of seat-of-the-pants statements.
The thought that occurred was: how do they make those indented numbers in the copper stabiliser near the weld?
Presumably those ID marks are already there on the copper before the joint is assembled and welded? Is there an onlne document that lists the order of procedures to be carried out when assembling these connections?
(Yes, I know that it's a really dumb question, but someone here has to ask it).
Eric Baird
No. I apparently needed to put a smiley face somewhere.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I'd classify it as satire.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Wikipedia defines the anthropic principle as "Our human understanding dictates that the only kind of universe we can occupy is one that is similar to the one we are in. If it were a completely different kind of universe, no human would occupy it."
I'm (semi-seriously) proposing a similar statement, "the only kind of universe we can occupy is one where the Earth wasn't destroyed by high-energy physics experiments. If Earth were destroyed, no human would occupy that universe."
If you believe in the many-worlds interpretation (and apparently 42% of physicists do), then there should be worlds where the LHC didn't fail, and even some where the SSC was built and activated. But if high-energy physics experiments can destroy Earth, then those worlds no longer contain observers, so the only worlds that we can observe are those where the experiments were never activated. So, every time an event prevents high-energy physics experiments from occurring, it is additional evidence that those experiments are dangerous.
BTW, this hypothesis could also explain the Fermi paradox. Intelligent life could be quite common if it normally destroys itself. Only in an infinitesimal fraction of the many worlds would intelligence survive, due to strings of "lucky accidents", and they would see themselves as alone. Only when they explore other stars would they discover that other stars have planetary-mass black holes orbiting them. You know, I may turn this into a sci-fi story.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The anthorpic principle applies to conditions that were in place from the beginning of the universe. Your version applies to events that may happen at some point during the evolution of the universe, and thus doesn't apply.
That's a classic case of begging the question. You first assume that the experiment is dangerous in order to claim that it destroys alternate worlds. There is no independent evidence to support this assumption.
You do that.
The anthorpic principle applies to conditions that were in place from the beginning of the universe. Your version applies to events that may happen at some point during the evolution of the universe, and thus doesn't apply.
You seem to be using a very specific definition. Have you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle? Pay particular attention to the parts that discuss why we are living when we do.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
That was an interesting bit of extra info I hadn't read before. Thank you. I shall thus amend my statement: The anthropic principle applies to conditions that were arrived at in the past, before we observed them. You seem to be attempting to apply it to events that may happen at some point in the future evolution of the universe, where it doesn't belong.
The anthropic principle is a statement about the bias inherent in the condition of the observer within this universe (and, note, not the other way around). It can't say anything about the future state of the observer beyond the physical laws and initial conditions already governing that observer. John Titor might be able to say something regarding the anthropic principle and the future, but we can't.
I suppose your statement
is true. However, this statement is in no way predictive; it can say nothing about what we may observe in the future! The way that you use this to arrive at your conclusion that high-energy physics experiments are dangerous is bogus. And not to forget the second part of my previous reply.