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LHC Knocked Out By Another Power Failure
known_ID writes "The Large Hadron Collider — the most puissant particle-punisher ever assembled by the human race — has suffered another major power failure, knocking not only the atom smasher itself but even its associated websites offline."
Yeah, but that was BS. Fact is, collisions of higher energies occur in the upper atmosphere with a much higher frequency than they will in the LHC, and have been for billions of years. The LHC iself is only expected to operate for a few tens of years by comparison.
Hard science is hard. There is a lot that needs to go right for this to work, and any of apparently dozens upon dozens of things can make it hiccup. No spooky explanations necessary.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Because his communication method is via Slashdot. He's creating a series of profiles, one for every year, that allow him to access and communicate with Slashdot in that time period. Duh.
I'm not a physicist or whatever sort of engineer one is to build a giant collider. However, this strikes me the same as saying "company X has 10 servers and they manage to keep them working fine, why does Google have problems? the only major difference is scale!" Well, yes, yes it is.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Who cares, dude? Shakespeare made up hundreds of words. English is a living language -- if people weren't allowed to make up words we would have nothing to call that machine you are using to post this inane crap, nor for the medium by which we are all disgraced by your brain vomit.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Say snotty engineers that cant do shit right
Hey, the damage was on a surface electricity line. Which was most likely installed by the power company running that part of the grid. I am sure no scientist bothered to work on it.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
...Yes, it cost $6b.
To put this in perspective, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle program cost $5.6b, and the resulting machine sucks.
Which is the bigger waste?
M-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
That's the most plausible explanation I've read yet for why Obama got the Nobel Peace Price, and it manages to maintain the prize's legitimacy! (such that it has)
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Academics don't even see failure like this as a bad thing
That's just not true. An experiment that provides data is never a failure. An experiment that does not provide data due to technical problems is a failure. It's a waste of time and resources, scientists hate that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
MABASPLOOM!
Fact is, collisions of higher energies occur in the upper atmosphere with a much higher frequency than they will in the LHC, and have been for billions of years.
Well why don't they just build a cloud chamber up in the atmosphere then?
Wow, that sounded a lot better in my head. :-) Never mind.
Yeah, it's worse than that -- many of the structural elements are made of steel, smelted, cast, and machined using processes that go back even further than Diesel.
OMG y dont we kill these jiants insted of stand on there sholdiers!
If you think that's bad, the guys using the LHC are Homo Sapiens. That's like 200000 years old, it should be run by iPhones, or something...
Yes, because I'm sure no engineers worked on the LHC. The whole thing was built by a bunch of theoretical physicists. ::rollseyes::
Before you make a comment like that you should compare the LHC performance to the restart of the Tevatron at Fermilab (and this was a restart not a new accelerator!). Having been there when it was happening the number of power cuts was far in excess of what the LHC has experienced so far. Indeed at one point the power cut out about twice a week which was far more of a problem for the Tevatron since it took almost a day to make enough antiprotons.
I totally agree with your comment, but you didn't answer the question. The reason we have had to build the LHC is because we don't have control over observations. With the LHC, we can time it to the picosecond, and observe at the correct moment. With the cosmic rays, we have to watch 24/7/365 just to know it's happened at all. And then we can't reproduce it at will. This is science.