LHC // Current

LHC might not be back online until 2010 or later

When the LHC first went down, it was believed that repairs could get the system up and running by April 2009. Then we saw repairs... more

NoGodsNoMasters
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World's Largest Computer Grid Fires Up

Since the LHC ground to an anticlimactic halt in recent weeks to undergo various tweaks and repairs, the world's largest... more

purplefox
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Grid of 100,000 computers heralds new internet dawn. "The Grid"

A network of 100,000 computers providing the greatest data processing capacity yet unleashed has been created to cope with... more

powerhungry
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DOOMSDAY LAWSUIT DISMISSED

A federal judge in Hawaii today dismissed a lawsuit raising fears about Europe's Large Hadron Collider, on the grounds that... more

aspenlve
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The God Particle

The is the "Director's Cut" of our coverage of the Large Hadron Collider, now with more interviews and kitsch.

Brandon_in_Paris
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Large Hadron Collider down for 2 months

The world's largest atom smasher -- which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month -- is more badly damaged than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.

Experts have gone into the 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border to examine the damage that halted operations about 36 hours after its September 10 startup, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out," Gillies told The Associated Press.

Gillies said the sector that was damaged will have to be warmed up well above the absolute zero temperature used for operations so that repairs can be made -- a time-consuming process.

"A number of magnets raised their temperature by around 100 degrees," Gillies said. "We have now to warm up the whole sector in a controlled manner before we can actually go in and repair it."

The $10 billion particle collider, in the design and construction stages for more than two decades, is the world's largest atom smasher. It fires beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms around the tunnels at nearly the speed of light.

It then causes the protons to collide, revealing how the tiniest particles were first created after the "big bang," which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything else.
Gillies said such failures occur frequently in particle accelerators, but it was made more complicated in this case because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero, colder than outer space, for maximum efficiency.

"When they happen in our other accelerators, it's a matter of a couple of days to fix them," Gillies said. "But because this is a superconducting machine and you've got long warmup and cool-down periods, it means we're going to be off for a couple of months."

He said it would take "several weeks minimum" to warm up the sector.

"Then we can fix it," Gillies said. "Then we cool it down again."The world's largest atom smasher -- which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month -- is more badly damaged than... more