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Vacuum Leaks Lead To Another LHC Delay

Posted by Soulskill on from the doomsday-averted-once-more dept.

suraj.sun tips this story at ZDNet about a new problem with the LHC. Quoting: "The restart of the Large Hadron Collider has been pushed back further, following the discovery of vacuum leaks in two sectors of the experiment. The world's largest particle collider is now unlikely to restart before mid-November, according to a CERN press statement. The project had been expected to start again in October. To repair the leaks, which are from the helium circuit into the insulating vacuum, sectors 8-1 and 2-3 will have to be warmed from 80K to room temperature. Adjacent sub-sectors will act as 'floats,' while the remainder of the surrounding sectors will be kept at 80K, CERN said in the statement. The repair work will not have an impact on the vacuum in the beam pipe. CERN has pushed back the restart a number of times, as repair work has continued. To begin with, scientists said the LHC experiment would restart in April 2009. In May, CERN [said] that the restarted experiment could run through the winter to make up some of the lost time."

6 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. *sigh* by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As someone on the LHC/CMS experiment team, let me be the first to say "Argh."

  2. Re:Worrisome by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's worrisome is that these same scientists who can't seem to build this thing without some fatal flaw are the same scientists telling us there's nothing to worry about when they create a black hole.

    The scientists blame the engineers. But let's see who gets "credit" for the Galactic Darwin Award.
         

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Re:Worrisome by NonSequor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide

    I admit it's silly, but I can't shut up the thought in the back of my head that maybe the earth only continues to exist in branches where the start up of the LHC is delayed.

    --
    My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
  4. Re:Is that first thing we need ? by ionix5891 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why nobody was able to find any alien civilizations yet ?

    Prime Directive

  5. Re:Bit off more than they could chew by FrameRotBlues · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Were you saying something similar from 1961 through 1968?

  6. Re:Is that first thing we need ? by pomakis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One thing I've never understood about this explanation is that it doesn't explain why it's always the anti-particle that falls into the black hole. Wouldn't chance dictate that half the time it will be the particle, causing the black hole to take on the extra mass?

    (I'm sure the answer to this question is somehow related to a similar question that I've always had... and that is: why is the universe composed almost entirely out of matter rather than being a mix? and why aren't there any anti-matter black holes?)