Transporting a 15-Meter-Wide, 600-Ton Magnet Cross Country

necro81 writes "Although its Tevatron particle accelerator has gone dark, Fermi Laboratory outside Chicago is still doing physics. A new experiment, called muon g-2 will investigate quantum mechanical behavior of the electron's heavier sibling: the muon. Fermi needs a large ring chamber to store the muons it produces and investigates, and it just so happens that Brookhaven National Laboratory outside NYC has one to spare. But how do you transport a delicate, 15-m diameter, 600-ton superconducting magnet halfway across the country? Very carefully."

Comments

Hello datacenters

[dadelbunts]

I would be so tempted to just drive by datacenters wiping all their data. It probably wouldnt work BUT I CAN DREAM CANT I!

Re:Hello datacenters

[bobthesungeek76036]

If it's an electromagnet you would need an aweful big alternator to wipe the datacenter...

Re:Hello datacenters

[dadelbunts]

The dream police, they live inside of my head. The dream police, they come to me in my bed. The dream police, theyre coming to arrest me, oh no.

Re:Hello datacenters

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Even if you could drive it around with the coils kept superconductive and under current, good luck trying to avoid all the buildings with structural steel inside!

Re:Hello datacenters

[geirlk]

Just don't dream while that magnet is driving fast by close to your head.

Re:Hello datacenters

[Anonymous Coward]

don't worry, I saw it this morning. It, and the truck, was hanging from a steel railroad underpass.

Re:Hello datacenters

[Virtucon]

Preferably an IRS Data center, that would be uber cool.

Re:Hello datacenters

[flibbajobber]

At 600 tons, I think you could just aim at any datacenter and drive right through it, magnet or not...

Re:Hello datacenters

[nitehawk214]

No you CAN'T.

... don't even try.

Cross country?

[jeffmeden]

Brookhaven to Batavia is only about 1000 miles by even a lax road route. Where the heck is this thing going, on a national tour? The web site claims it will travel 3,200 miles. Is it going to spring break first?

Re:Cross country?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "The Muon g-2 ring, an electromagnet made of steel and aluminum, begins its 3,200-mile trek from New York in early June. From there, it will sail by barge down the East Coast, around Florida's tip into the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River until it arrives in Illinois."

Re:Cross country?

[bdcrazy]

I would imagine bridge clearances and weight limits on bridges would be at least 2 of the issues leading to the path chosen. (others would be things like permits, powerlines etc)

Re:Cross country?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:
"... involves loading the ring onto a specially prepared barge and bringing it down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida and up the Mississippi River to Illinois. The ring is expected to leave New York in early June, and land in Illinois in late July. Once it arrives, the ring will be placed onto a truck built just for this purpose, and driven to Fermilab in Batavia, a suburb of Chicago."

Re:Cross country?

[tibit]

It would be way too complex, logistically, to have it shipped by road directly. It pretty much blocks one direction of traffic on a divided highway. It will travel probably a 100 miles or so over land, and the rest by barge - down the east coast, and up the Mississippi River.

Re:Cross country?

[lexarius]

Apparently tipping it more than a few degrees causes permanent damage. If you have to detour around very small hills, you might have to detour a very long way.

Re:Cross country?

[Nukenbar]

Like most hung things, it is easier to take via water, even if the ground sea distance is much greater than a straight line approach.

The majority of the trip will be via barge.

Re:Cross country?

[kobatan]

It's going by barge for most of the journey. From the article: "It will float from New York Harbor in June, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River by July."

Re:Cross country?

[icebike]

Here's an Idea, why not move the Scientists? Greyhound bus.

Or telecommute?

Re:Cross country?

[jeffmeden]

It's going by barge for most of the journey. From the article: "It will float from New York Harbor in June, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River by July."

I got the barge part, but the Mississippi part was buried a bit further. I pictured a trip across the Great Lakes. Don't they know about the Erie Canal?

Re:Cross country?

[funky49]

Basically they are moving the instrument to a facility that can make a better stream of particles to steer into it.

Re:Cross country?

[jeffmeden]

Here's an Idea, why not move the Scientists? Greyhound bus.

Or telecommute?

They need to get *muons* into the ring, not the scientists. And Muons only survive on their own for 2 microseconds so even telecommuting is out of the question.

Re:Cross country?

[krlynch]

We usually prefer airplanes to buses (lots cheaper, given the time value of money.....)

The cost of running the experiment again at Brookhaven (which had been our initial idea) would be significantly higher than moving it to Fermilab, because of the cost of required accelerator upgrades at Brookhaven. Fermilab has protons to spare, and the experiment fits into the larger muon program at the Lab. http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/experiments/intensity/

Re:Cross country?

[peragrin]

Um at 3,200 miles I bet it goes by ship up the St Lawrence around the channels and locks and docks in Chicago.

That would br roughly that for range. and takes a lot of the traffic out .

Re:Cross country?

[kobatan]

I assume they ruled it out for one reason or another. I live in the UK. I don't have enough local knowledge to comment further sensibly.

Re:Cross country?

[peragrin]

Up to the st Lawrence and it can dock in Chicago. That would actually be shorter and faster than the Mississippi As the river and locks would slow things down out on the great lakes themselves they can get up to full speed.

Re:Cross country?

[cusco]

Why didn't they barge this through the Great Lakes instead of up the Mississippi? The only reason occurs to me is perhaps some spots on the Chicago River might have been too narrow where it passes under bridges, but even that seems unlikely.

Re:Cross country?

[gman003]

They're moving the magnet to a particle accelerator. It's already at one, and it generated some interesting findings, but the particle accelerator it's currently at is too weak to give a margin of error low enough to safely call it a discovery.

Thus, they're moving it to a more powerful accelerator, since moving the accelerator to it is not exactly an option.

Re:Cross country?

[mpeskett]

They're sure going to feel silly when they realise how easy it really was all along. Especially if they ever find out that some guy from the internet beat them to the punch on such an obvious idea.

Re:Cross country?

[krlynch]

Both routes were considered, but I'm not sure why one was chosen over the other. Presumably input from the companies bidding on the contract had something to do with it.

Re:Cross country?

[bws111]

The Erie Canal is not used for commercial traffic very much anymore. 2008 was its busiest recent year, and there were only 42 shipments that year.

Re:Cross country?

[bws111]

For starters, this thing weighs 600 tons. It would have to cross hundreds of bridges, most of which are probably not rated for 600 tons. And of course it is much wider than normal travel lanes and would move very slowly, creating a traffic nightmare. Then there is the can`t tilt more than a few degrees, which would make crossing mountains kind of hard.

Re:Cross country?

[tompaulco]

Then there is the can`t tilt more than a few degrees, which would make crossing mountains kind of hard.

Not to mention oceans.

Re: Cross country?

[ebno-10db]

Erie Canal locks were too narrow. Northern route would have to go through N. Atlantic and St. Lawrence Seaway. Average wave height in N. Atlantic larger than hugging coast. Also ended up 300k cheaper due to barge and tug requirements. Ends at same place...Lemont, IL. Shipping in June to beat peak hurricane months.

Why the N. Atlantic. How about hugging the Canadian coast? As you can tell, many people here want to give up their jobs in electronics and software and become shipping agents.

Re:Cross country?

[shoor]

That was my thought too (up the St Lawrence), but I read enough of the fine article to see that it's going down the Atlantic seaboard and then up the Mississippi. I understand going by water as much as possible, but why that route?

Re:Cross country?

[mrvan]

As sibling says, bridges and hills are a problem. Major waterways are generally constructed so that bridges are either really high (as in 30ft+) or have some part that can be opened.

Anything that fits on a truck is easy to transport over land, but stuff that is significantly larger and can't be moved in parts is difficult over land. On the water, major ports and waterways are pretty wide. For example, the coast pilot linked a boatnerd.com [1] (who doesn't love that url) says for the mississipi - illinois waterway connection:

(10) Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway-
(11) depth, 9 feet (2.7);
(12) width, 80 feet (24.38 meters);
(13) length, 600 feet (182.88 meters);
(14) vertical clearance 17 feet (5.18 meters);

So, you can transport something that is roughly 20x150 meters. Some random internet site [2] says that "The standard barge is 195 feet long, 35 feet wide, and can be used to a 9-foot draft. Its capacity is 1500 tons. Some of the newer barges today are 290 feet by 50 feet, double the capacity of earlier barges." So, if we get one of them "newer barges', we can transport something that is 75 x 15 meters and weighs 3000 tonnes using equipment that is standard on the infrastructure.

A random wiki quote [3] says that "In the United States, 80,000 pounds (36,287 kg) is the maximum allowable legal gross vehicle weight without a permit.". So, with standard equipment you can transport something on the ground up to 36 metric tons, or about 0.1 percent of what fits on the barge*. Of course, you *can* transport something bigger than that, but then you get into serious logistic operations with special equipment, road closures, etc etc, while the barge can just be loaded up and sail away.

tl;dr: roads are made for fast and flexible transportation of relatively small amounts of cargo; shipping is made for slow transportation of bulk and large items.

[1] http://www.boatnerd.com/facts-figures/cpgreat.htm
[2] http://www.caria.org/barges_tugboats.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-trailer_truck

*) I'm totally ignoring any possible short tonne, long tonne, metric tonne etc errors here, since that won't make a dent into a 3 orders of magnitude difference...

Re:Cross country?

[LoRdTAW]

It is a lot easier to move 600 tons by barge than by land. The size and weight makes it impossible to go over bridges and most roads. Not only is the weight highly concentrated, 1.2 million pounds for the magnet and probably another 300,000+ for the modular platform trailers & tractor but the width is nearly 50 feet. At that weight your speed is severely limited, always below 5 mph and you are limited to moving at night only. From the map, I would guess it might make its way south on floyd then onto a barge in the bay. I don't see how they could get it anywhere on the north shore unless they go up floyd to 25 and take lilco rd to use the docks at the power station (if it fits up those roads). From there its an easy trip on water. No bridges, narrow roads or worries about weight. Its open water until the Mississippi.

You also have to take into account the cost and process to apply for permits. You have to plan the route in advance and have it approved by the DOT. By law you need a police escort for a load that large in NY, more money. Imagine planning a route for hundreds of miles involving police escorts, road closures, moving only at night, slow speeds and having to deal with routing around bridges (if possible) and maybe needing to reinforce bridges/overpasses. It can and has been done many times but its costly and time consuming. It can take upward of a year or more to plan a move that big.

Re:Cross country?

[cheater512]

I imagine calm sea waves don't actually do much to a large barge with 600 tons on it.

Re:Cross country?

[the_other_chewey]

I imagine calm sea waves don't actually do much to a large barge with 600 tons on it.

A 600-ton barge isn't large.

Re:Cross country?

[cheater512]

Large as in size not weight.

Re:Cross country?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suspect there are more places you could safely harbor the barge along the East Coast going south and around Florida then there are going north and up through the Great Lakes. A storm comes on one route, you don't have to far to go. But if you were try to cut across any of the Great Lakes and squall front comes through, then you're pretty much screwed. It gets rough out there and finding a harbor with enough room to pull into on short notice might be tricky. Also on the Great Lakes, a storm front usually has more effect on the maritime condition. (You get the weather equivalent of sloshing back and forth in a bathtub. As where in the ocean those things dissipate out a bit.)

Re:Cross country?

[NixieBunny]

My radio observatory is about to have a 12 meter telescope antenna transported from central New Mexico to western Arizona. They have the same problem, but I imagine the saving grace is that the southwestern desert doesn't care if freeway traffic is blocked for an hour.

Re:Cross country?

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked the head of Emmert (the shipping company) this question a few weeks ago. From that brief conversation, it is my understanding that the Southern/Mississippi route was chosen despite the longer distance for safety reasons, which is the primary concern. The claim was that they could hug the coast and pull into safe harbor in the event of inclement conditions, while the Northern route up the St. Lawrence, etc. has stretches where the barge would not have that option and was, therefore, riskier.

Re: Cross country?

[guruevi]

I live near the Erie Canal. You can't get something that big through it. It barely fits a passenger your boat at some points. I know at least a couple of locations in a 50 mile stretch where it would get stuck in the area.

Re:Cross country?

[sociocapitalist]

FTA: "The Muon g-2 ring, an electromagnet made of steel and aluminum, begins its 3,200-mile trek from New York in early June. From there, it will sail by barge down the East Coast, around Florida's tip into the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River until it arrives in Illinois."

So just in time for hurricane season http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Atlantic_hurricane_season

Re:Cross country?

[sudon't]

Bridge ratings are per axle weight, usually 34,000 lbs. They simply add wheels to spread out the load. You'll often see, (at least, as a truck driver, I often see), relatively small but very heavy loads on a rig that is much longer than appears to be needed. That's done in order to spread the weight over many axles. I don't think this load's gonna hit "hundreds" of bridges anyway. Most of the journey will be by sea, and Illinois is pretty flat. The interstates they will use typically go under the secondary roads, rather than over them.

Re:Cross country?

[smooth wombat]

Are you stupid? The person gave a perfectly reasonable explanation to why they are doing this by barge than by land.

You just have to realize the person answering is an engineer.

Re:Cross country?

[bws111]

The question was why ship on water instead of overland. I answered that - if you are shipping overland you are going to cross hundreds of bridges. As to the weight limit - a normal tractor trailer is limited to 20 tons on 4 axles, right? This thing is 30x that weight. 120 axles is no longer a truck, it is a train. My guess is that the route from where it docks to where it is installed is chosen to cross no bridges.

Re:Cross country?

[LoRdTAW]

I looked through the comments and the articles and I think the question I answered was based on inside information. Nowhere did I read in any of the articles that there were two possible routes considered, only down the coast and up the Mississippi. There is this snippet from the PopSci article: "He didnt seem fazed at all by the prospect of getting the huge muon ring from New York to northern Illinois. We have the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, after all." notice how he said Great Lakes, lakes being plural which includes Huron and Erie which happen to provide a waterway between western NY or PA and IL.

If you read both those sentences and the question asked it sounds like this: Why didn't we move the magnet through NY/PA to the great lakes and barge it to IL? It makes perfect sense because even if the magnet is moved through the Chicago river to Lake Michigan, it still needs to go up the Mississippi which is fed by the Chicago river. And going a bit up north on Michigan means they are travelling on one of the great lakes.

Re:Cross country?

[QuantumBeep]

The problem with a large barge with a radio antenna on it is that it could charge up a discharge,

Re:Cross country?

[AK Marc]

There are no mountains on the ocean (other than islands, and you can steer a ship).

They aren't.

[fisted]

It's just that You Can't Explain That.

Re: They aren't.

[Modern Primate]

What if you don't understand humor? Is Slashdot the right site for you then?

By Train?

[ggraham412]

Maglev train, of course!

UPS

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS and lots of bubble wrap!

How do you transport a 600-ton magnet...

[Jaegs]

By using another 600-ton magnet, flipped around, of course.

One word:

[bradgoodman]

Amtrak!

(Too soon??)

Cover it with a tarp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cover the thing with a tarp, and you've got a mysterious huge disc-shaped object being trucked around escorted by police... Can't wait to see the alien conspiracy sites light up!

If they can deliver this safely....

[mark-t]

... then I can see absolutely no reason that a package that is clearly marked fragile, and probably nowhere near as fragile as this monstrosity, should be mishandled in transit *EVER* again.

I hope they pull this off.

I look forward to an age where couriers can actually be relied upon to deliver such goods without subjecting them to g forces beyond what their structural integrity can withstand.

Re:If they can deliver this safely....

[Nidi62]

... then I can see absolutely no reason that a package that is clearly marked fragile, and probably nowhere near as fragile as this monstrosity, should be mishandled in transit *EVER* again.

I hope they pull this off.

I look forward to an age where couriers can actually be relied upon to deliver such goods without subjecting them to g forces beyond what their structural integrity can withstand.

I think most couriers/handlers see "fragile" more as a challenge than as a warning. You know, see how far it can bend before it will break, that kind of thing.

Re:If they can deliver this safely....

[Nemyst]

I'm sure if you pay the same price they do to ship your fragile package it'd arrive in pristine condition too.

Re:If they can deliver this safely....

[KGIII]

I'd not be surprised if they were using the Gimbaldi family. They do a good job actually and move a lot of the more famous things. They have some neat rigs and custom moving equipment that they've developed over the years.

Wonder what they collected?

[QuasiRob]

By the time it arrived I wonder if it was covered in bits of wire, steel cans, bikes. screws and other random bits of iron.

Re:Wonder what they collected?

[PPH]

Why are all these people tailgating me?

Missed opportunity

[Experiment 626]

This would have made for an awesome episode of "Shipping Wars".

It's not a magnet

[hawguy]

It's not a magnet, it's an electromagnet, which just makes it a large and sensitive piece of equipment rather than a big magnet.

When I saw the headline and summary, I thought they were going to have to take special precautions to stay away from metals and other materials that could be affected by the huge magnet.

Re:It's not a magnet

[hawguy]

I bet you suck dicks.

I do, sometimes. Though I'm sure why that's relevant?

Re:It's not a magnet

[tompaulco]

It's not a magnet, it's an electromagnet, which just makes it a large and sensitive piece of equipment rather than a big magnet.

Well, hey, then they can just levitate the sucker.

Move the people...

[reg]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to move the people and the money? 90% of the time the people involved don't even have to be near the machine, with this newfangled internet thing that some people invented...

Re:Move the people...

[krlynch]

As I mentioned up above, it turns out to be loads cheaper to move the experiment to Fermilab than to upgrade the accelerator complex at Brookhaven to do the experiment there.

Re:Move the people...

[Entropius]

Because there is a lot of very, very expensive equipment at Fermilab already. As big of a deal as this thing is, the stuff that is already there is far more pricey and extensive. Physicists are easy to move; their equipment isn't.

good old skool karma whoring!

[Thud457]

That? Oh, that's a, err, pizza!

can you knock out the ez-pass scanners with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

can you knock out the ez-pass scanners with this?

No tilt.. so lets move it over the ocean?

[boaworm]

>> The trip will be tense, because the ring’s massive electromagnet cannot tilt or twist more than a few degrees, or the wiring inside will be irreparably damaged. It will float from New York Harbor in June, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River by July.

That seems rather risky. Most ships would at one point or another tilt more than a few degrees to either side due to .. waves. No mention on if this is a gyro-stabilized barge perhaps...

Re:No tilt.. so lets move it over the ocean?

[mrmeval]

Ask them. I assume it's some sort of stabilized platform inside. I'm sure such specialty devices have been made in the past and they'd make a custom interior for that device.

Re:No tilt.. so lets move it over the ocean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they're going to suspend it from a rope. High tech, I know.

Being landlubbers by birth, we tend to think of the surface of this planet as a hard plane. It's not, and gravity makes damn sure you get reminded of it from time to time.

Re:No tilt.. so lets move it over the ocean?

[flatbedexpress]

Transporting on land will be the easy part. They will use a Goldhofer trailer that has hydraulic leveling axles that will keep the entire deck of the trailer flat and level. But, if it was my equipment, I would make sure their is a large gap from the trailer to the actual magnets so it doesn't affect my control systems for steering the trailer. For the barge, odd are that they will leave the magnet on the Goldhofer trailer. That way, the trailer can keep it from twisting and tilting if the barge does.

Re:No tilt.. so lets move it over the ocean?

[Entropius]

It's an electromagnet, so nothing interesting happens unless it's got a whopping big current in it.

Saint Lawrence Seaway

[matthelm007]

Wouldn't it be much shorter all around to go by the Saint Lawrence Seaway? Shorter on the water and shorter distance in Illinois???

Re:Saint Lawrence Seaway

[istartedi]

Due to the aforementioned tilting problem, the North Atlantic is a bad idea. Too many swells. Going south allows them to use the Intracoastal Waterways

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[cffrost]

It's a big electro magnet. Why can tilting it a couple of degrees break it?
The article doesn't say as far as I can tell, so I can only assume it's because it was built from crappy parts, or assembled by idiots.

It could be a Bitter electromagnet, which are constructed from thin disks of porous copper.

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[krlynch]

Well, we might be idiots, but that's not the problem. It's a set of three very large superconducting coils, custom wound on-site in the 1990s, built into cryostats that can't be disassembled, and being moved as a set of monolithic units. They were never designed or intended to be moved, and significant engineering work has gone into determining the mechanical loads they can be safely subjected to.

Not that tough

[Animats]

It's not really that tough a job. The thing is about 4 lanes wide, and not excessively tall. There's less than 20 miles of road movement at each end of the trip. So it's going to be a routine big move with brief road closures. Probably late at night.

The rest of the trip is by barge, down the East Coast, around Florida, and up the Mississippi, Illinois, and DesPlanes rivers to Chicago. There are standard barges which can easily handle something of that size. The locks on that route have 110 foot width.

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[tompaulco]

Well, we might be idiots, but that's not the problem. It's a set of three very large superconducting coils, custom wound on-site in the 1990s, built into cryostats that can't be disassembled, and being moved as a set of monolithic units. They were never designed or intended to be moved, and significant engineering work has gone into determining the mechanical loads they can be safely subjected to.

How much would it cost to build another one at say, Fermilab?

Storage ring, right...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just a cover story. They're really moving the Stargate.

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[Herkum01]

If you read the article, it says that shipping is 1/50 of the cost of building a new one.

Simple

[HtR]

If you turn it on, you should be able to just pull it along behind a train, assuming the tracks could be electrified as needed (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev for details if necessary).
Then again, if this "superconductor" really has super powers as its name implies, it should be able to fly.

Great Lakes

[Roger W Moore]

Makes you wonder what's wrong with the Great Lakes route which is presumably much shorter.

Re:Great Lakes

[crontabminusell]

Makes you wonder what's wrong with the Great Lakes route which is presumably much shorter.

My guess would be the waves on the lake are too choppy to keep the magnet ring level. The waves are far choppier (higher frequency) on the Great Lakes than they are in the ocean.

Re:Great Lakes

[blackraven14250]

It's on Long Island, which means you'd have to cross through NYC in order to get it out to Upstate New York by road. That alone might be impossible - I'm not sure you'd be able to drive it past a certain point on the island, you wouldn't make it to Manhattan, and by the time you're loading it on a boat to get it across to Connecticut or Massachusetts, with an unload there and another loading at the lakes, it might just be cheaper and less error prone to ship it around to the Gulf.

Re:Great Lakes

[frinkster]

Makes you wonder what's wrong with the Great Lakes route which is presumably much shorter.

To use the Great Lakes route (as they are currently used), the magnet would be required to go out into the open ocean, go around Cape Cod and the rest of Massachusetts, go around Nova Scotia and into the St Lawrence Seaway, which would then allow it to enter Lake Ontario, go through the Welland Canal into Lake Erie, and on and on to Chicago. The open ocean is what is going to kill it.

The chosen route will almost certainly be through the intracoastal waterway which requires very little open ocean travel - and that can be planned for especially calm days.

But alas, the real question is why the route does not involve the Erie Canal (which is still in operation!), which could certainly accommodate something of this size. They could head up the Hudson River to Albany and then take the canal to Buffalo on Lake Erie, bypassing the ocean altogether. Perhaps they really are concerned about the waves in the Great Lakes.

Re:Great Lakes

[bws111]

The locks on the Erie Canal can handle a vessel 43.5 feet wide. The magnet is around 49 feet wide. In addition, there is only 15 feet of bridge clearance (not sure if that is a problem or not).

High Energy Physics

[Roger W Moore]

And Muons only survive on their own for 2 microseconds

That's easy to fix - boost them to ~260 GeV and they will last long enough to make a 1,600 km journey. It's the 1,600 km of vacuum pipe and focussing magnets that is the real problem.

Re:High Energy Physics

[noobermin]

lol.
This is slashdot, but not many people will understand this joke.

Re:High Energy Physics

[Noughmad]

What joke? Due to relativistic time dilation, if they are moving faster, their observed lifetime in our system of reference will be longer.

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[gmhowell]

Well, we might be idiots, but that's not the problem. It's a set of three very large superconducting coils, custom wound on-site in the 1990s, built into cryostats that can't be disassembled, and being moved as a set of monolithic units. They were never designed or intended to be moved, and significant engineering work has gone into determining the mechanical loads they can be safely subjected to.

How much would it cost to build another one at say, Fermilab?

Here's a hint: that information is in the article.

I remember the old 16mm movies of the Hale mirror

[Virtucon]

I remember back in Elementary school watching the Hale telescope mirror movie. One of those old 16mm, rainy day, hell the teacher has to have a cigarette break flicks? Old black and white footage is available here: http://archive.org/details/capsca_00001

Anyway, when they shipped the blank out to Caltech by Train it was put in a steel case. The Blank was then polished at Caltech to make the 200" mirror for the telescope and that was shipped via truck to Palomar Mountain. Anyway, they put it in a special casing for shipment and when they arrived at Palomar, they found bullet holes in the casing. Even back then, the local Luddites just wanted to spoil the fun. Anyway, my point is here that if they could ship a 200 inch mirror in the early part of the 20th century, they should be able to easily transport a 15mm magnet that's hollow in the middle.

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[iggymanz]

but is that pre-paid or C.O.D.?

Muons and speed of light

[ModernGeek]

The article mentions muons traveling at the speed of light. I think it's important to discern that they are moving /close/ to the speed of light, but not at the speed of light.

There's a joke there, but I'm not touching it.

[girlinatrainingbra]

re: Like most hung things,...it is easier to take via water...

There's a joke there, but I'm not touching it.

.

... but I'm not touching it....

That's what she said!

Oh wait, I done goofed on myself if I were a guy. I musta got that joke meme wrong somehow... ;>)

Need to move a ring?

[PPH]

Get a hobbit to do it. Its the only way.

Coyote Road Services

[tengu1sd]

At Coyote Road Services we specialize in creative uses for powerful magnets. Over the years, our company has coordinated many road closures and infrastructure upgrades. The skilled technicians and engineers use top rated ACME equipment in our projects. Coyote Road Services, call and one of our agents will take you to lunch and go over your project plan.

Let the magnet ride levitated using magnetic field

[Codifex Maximus]

Hmm... it may be possible to create an electromagnet run off a mobile power supply that would put North to North or South to South so that the magnet would levitate off a surface and ride smoothly. Depends on configuration of the magnet though.

Consider the kids

[Dahlgil]

Has anyone considered how many scouts will go missing because of this?

Re:Why is it so fragile?

[SleazyRidr]

Let's look at the two possible options here:
1) The guys who built Fermilab don't actually know anything about physics
2) You are not actually an expert on magnets
Which seems more likely?