First there was a glitch with one of the huge 30-tonne transformers causing a delay of a few days, then a quench leaked a tonne of helium coolant into one of the tunnels, forcing a two-month shutdown while repairs could be made.
Brace yourselves for some more bad news.
In a statement released by CERN today, due to an obligatory maintenance period, the LHC will have to remain off-line until late March or early April 2009. Problems with an experiment as huge as the worlds biggest particle accelerator can be expected, but this will be a costly delay and a psychological setback after the initial excitement of the first particle circulation on October 10th. The elusive Higgs Boson will have to wait a few more months...
From: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/09/23/ really-bad-news-lhc-to-be-switched-off-until-spring-2009/
Why?!?!
ID:48531
 Sep 24 2008, 2:23 pm
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Sep 24 2008, 2:27 pm
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Jeff8500
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Noooo! I knew it would be suspended for ~2 months when I heard it had a small electrical problem, but now this?
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Not a small electrical problem. There was a helium leak, and they have to correct a problem with the magnets. They have to be at 2 Kelvin, but they're at 4 Kelvin (four degrees above the coldest possible temperature, which can't actually be reached). They need to be heated up to room temperature (~294 Kelvin), repaired, and then cooled down. The warming and recooling processes will take a long time.
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Ah, the crappy media lies* to me again. I heard the problem was an electrical problem, rather than a helium leak. It was correct on the temperature matter, though.
*Or it could be that I'm half asleep when I read the newspaper. | |
brb, black hole.
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Looks like we'll have to wait to see Pop turn into a string of spaghetti :(
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They're just doing it to build hype and sell more t-shirts. =P
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How could this happen to me.
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