LHC transformer malfunction, page 1

Yeah, dude... I might be nuts but I told me girlfriend about this when she got home and at the time I admitted to her that it could have been my imagination, but it was a small spark smaller than a pea glowing orange/white and it had a trail behind it, and it was it was moving fairly fast and in a straight line.

I was not really thinking of the LHC until my girlfriend texted me that in the news this morning that they had a malfunction with the electronics which I assume is responsible for containing the beam within the collider.

Now I do have reason to believe it was a figment of my imagination... because I was reading about that guy who was hit with the proton beam and it passed thru his head front to back and it didnt kill him... and it was linked to another story about the experiments performed on the Apollo missions where they were measuring cosmic radiation passing thru their brains/retinal nerves. So admittedly this was something I was thinking about as I was reading it. But II definitely saw this spark traveling thru matter (my house and me). Might sound crazy, but thats what happened.

I am not a fear monger at all, I am actually the biggest advocate of the LHC and science in general, but this does make me wonder about the power and safety of the machine. (if that was even the cause of this spark)

reply posted on 20-9-2008 @ 03:54 AM by 4N6310

Hrm, looks like if this isn't part of the same issue, they have even greater problems:

Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work.

Source:
news.bbc.co.uk...

A "quench" almost sounds like a good thing...almost.

I can just hear all the french/swiss firefighters all running around sounding like the chipmunks.

[edit on 20-9-2008 by 4N6310]

reply posted on 20-9-2008 @ 04:36 AM by mapsurfer_

reply to post by 4N6310

It is a little disturbing the LHC Homepage News makes no mention of the shutdown. Matter of fact.... no news since September 8th?? Whats up with that?

Anywayz, thanks for the BBC news link. Says

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

Wonder what a quench is? Doesn't sound good. Says there was a ton of Liquid Helium lost, and loss of vacuum. Hope the Cern Fire Brigade can control a ring of fire. At this point we must sit back and question the competency of those involved in this project.

I am all for scientific progress, but now I just waiting for sparks to fly.

reply posted on 20-9-2008 @ 05:22 AM by pazcat

reply to post by mapsurfer_

Cosmic radiation

I immediately thought of the cosmic radiation experiments although id say its highly unlikely, thats just a small link i couldnt find the photos ive seen before of the helmets, you may have faulty electrical equipment or as you said just imagination. Doubt it would be LHC related.

reply posted on 20-9-2008 @ 02:56 PM by 4N6310

reply to post by mapsurfer_

Well, the article goes on:

A spokesman for Cern told the BBC it was not yet clear how soon progress could resume at the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator.

(snip)failure was "not good news"(/snip)

...and the quench:

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

Makes me think of what a blacksmith does to metal when they dunk it in water.
That can't be good for the magnets. I've got some experience with thermal effects on rare earth magnets and as we've all learnt from NIST, heat weakens magnetic attraction in molecules. So I ended up with a paperweight instead of a motor after getting it to about 121C. Let's hope the LHC magnets don't need replacement. I'm sure it's a fairly different kind of magnet anyways.

There's more information on quench tests here:
larpdocs.fnal.gov...

Kinda technical, but the "LHC QPS Overview & Status 04.pdf" on that page has some graphs that appear to indicate a gradual reduction in quench efficiency each time.

I'm not quite sure why they have "quench heaters" when they are trying to keep the magnets cold. Maybe some kind of thermal pumping technique?

[edit on 20-9-2008 by 4N6310]

reply posted on 20-9-2008 @ 06:29 PM by woogleuk

reply to post by mapsurfer_

Sound to me like you and Toadmund are describing a form of ball lightning, that can be pea-sized, orangy in colour and leave a trail. Its a naturally occuring phenomenon and can pass through solid objects.

Read here for more info en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 20/9/08 by woogleuk]

reply posted on 25-9-2008 @ 07:24 AM by boaby_phet

reply to post by johnsky

the first or your post sums it up well

give cern a break, they have only built the largest, most advance ever to grace the earth, it stands to reason it wasent going to "just work"

anyone that is trying to critisize cern for this needs to go out, and try building their own super advance machine without anythgin going wrong. It stood to reason that with a machine that big it wasnt going to be completly plain sailing, as nothing is when building anythgin from scratch!

reply posted on 25-9-2008 @ 07:27 AM by blupblup

Apparently now it won't be operational until next spring.

The Large Hadron Collider, built to simulate the conditions at the very start of the universe, will not restart until spring, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said.

source

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