LHC Crashes, Fire Engines Called
Engineers hoping to smash particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were forced to stop work, after about 100 of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets heated up to more than 100°C.
The failure, called a quench, in this case a “massive” quench, occurred in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, at a point between Alice and CMS detectors, at about 09:30UTC/GMT on September 19, 2008.
The CMS “superconducting” magnet is meant to create a powerful magnetic field [when it works!] Source: CMS magnet, CERN. Image may be subject to copyright.
Tons of liquid helium leaked into the Collider’s 27-km tutunnel at Cern, near Geneva, Switzerland. Some 20 years after the construction began, and about $10 billion later, this was the second reported incident since last week which stopped work on the giant white elephant.
Photo of the Alice Detector in early 2008. Source: Alice website. Imaga may be subject to copyright.
The quench occurred when liquid helium leaked out of the LHC’s cooling system which keeps the super-cooled magnets at 1.9ºK above absolute zero ( 0ºK is -273.15ºC). LHC engineers also reported a loss of vacuum condition in the cooling system.
A faulty transformer delayed work at LHC throughout last week, and was replaced only a day before the quench occurred.
Will Be Back in November, Possibly December!
CERN spokesperson, James Gillies said the repairs would be expensive.
“A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.
“We’re investigating and we can’t really say more than that now.
“But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that’s what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC.”
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[Note: No photos of the fire engines called to LHC were available at the time of publishing!]
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