The large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be non-functional for two months as stated by European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern).
Today’s biggest science experiment The Hadron Collider had to be temporarily stopped because of a magnet failure. The damage was worse than what was anticipated. The LHC is created to smash protons together at huge speeds which would shed light on the fundamentals of physics.
This damage happened on Friday. A failure known as a quench, is failure to LHC`s super cooled magnet. The magnets got heated to approximately 100 degree centigrade. The reason as stated by the concerned people was because of tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel.
Cern spokesman James Gillies stated on Saturday that the sector of the LHC that is damaged will have to me warmed above the operating temperature of near absolute zero in order to make the repairs and then cooled down. The spokesmen also say that there is no danger to the public. Though a complete investigation is yet going on but the reason as it seems now is a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which caused its melting and resulted into this mechanical fault.
The experiment initiated its First step of firing its first beams around the accelerator 27 km underground ring around a week ago. The next step is to collide those beams head on. But this fault has brought a set back for around two months. The online logbook recorded this quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between Alice and CMS detectors. It stated that helium had leaked into the tunnel and the vacuum condition was lost. In order to allow steering of particle beams around the circuit, the superconducting magnets in LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 Kelvin above absolute zero.
Posted under General, Latest News
This post was written by Kevin on September 22, 2008
