Large Hadron Collider Struggling

Writing in the NY Times, Dennis Overbye covers the birthing pangs and the prospects for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (which we have discussed numerous times). "The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections. [And] many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine [Fermilab's Tevatron] across the ocean. ... Technicians have spent most of the last year cleaning up and inspecting thousands of splices in the collider. About 5,000 will have to be redone... Retraining magnets is costly and time consuming, experts say, and it might not be worth the wait to get all the way to the original target energy [of 7 TeV]. Many physicists say they would be perfectly happy if the collider never got above five trillion electron volts. Dr. Myers said he thought the splices as they are could handle 4 [TeV]. 'We could be doing physics at the end of November,' he said in July, before new vacuum leaks pushed the schedule back a few additional weeks. 'It's not the design energy of the machine, but it's 4 times higher than the Tevatron,' he said."

Comments

Somebody is very touchy today

[Overzeetop]

Seriously, I'm a troll?

This is some pretty difficult, complex work. As a sibling post pointed out, there are very highly stressed systems. Whoever bid this - and, no, I don't know anything about how it was bid but I have my suspicions - probably didn't decide to go hire a crack team of the best assemblers in Europe. They figured their standard labor for guys (and gals) who wire up buildings, telecom, and other lab environments. I work with these types of people sometimes, and they're not always focused on the end product (to put it nicely). QA for a project like this can only be so rigorous until the QA dwarfs the scope and cost of the actual construction. Sometimes it's a conscious decision (Hubble), sometimes it's a matter of budget or politics. Regardless, it only takes a moderate percentage of not-quite-perfect workmanship to really foul things up when you push a system to its limits.

I am suing them.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am a super student with a GPA of 2.7 and a near perfect (>89%) attendance record. I am going to sue these guys who are building this big thingie in a hole in the ground for not finding me and giving me a job. If they had done that, the project would be in A-OK shape.

Re:All

[Hurricane78]

It is not a joke. Or you're *really* bad at humor. If it were a joke, it would be funny. Placing a P.S. stating that "it is a joke" below a random statement, does not magically make it funny. And the blokes thinking they would look dumb when they don't laugh and moderate you funny right now, because of their weak self-confidence, do so even less.

PS: for the humor impaired: This is a joke.

P.P.S.: It really is not. ;)

P.P.P.S.: GOTO 10?

Re:5000 bad joints != cutting edge, It's ineptitud

[Kokuyo]

Oi, I'd like to remind you that this thing is located in Geneva, which is in the French speaking part of Switzerland. The rest of us don't like being confused with FRENCH speaking people ;).

Seriously, though, I'm only half joking. The French have a very interesting work ethic and while our French Fries don't like being confused with real French people, one has to admit that they are close together from a mentality standpoint.

I know I'm pretty bigoted here, but unfortunately, I also speak from experience.

Then again, even Swiss German work ethics are going down the drain since we have this overwhelming influx of German and French managers who, incidentally, learnt their 'tricks' from the USA.

Re:5000 bad joints != cutting edge, It's ineptitud

[damburger]

Yeah, because the American attempt to create a collider on this scale turned out really well, didn't it? I'm sure you might want to bring up the Apollo programme next; I will have to concede though, that the Saturn V really was a remarkable piece of German engineering.

Americans thinking they are better than everyone else used to annoy me, now it just seems pathetic.