Bad connection caused atom smasher shutdown, page 1

Bad connection caused atom smasher shutdown

news.yahoo.com

...CERN specialists have already figured out that a connector between electromagnets failed and heated up, causing a magnet "quench," or shutdown. It apparently melted a hole in the tube, causing a leak that spilled about a ton of the liquid helium used to chill that section...

...Before the failure, the plan had been to step up power on the collider so that scientists could start with test collisions of subatomic particles before the winter shutdown. That will have to wait until next April...

(visit the link for the full news article)

Looks like they won't be smashing things until the spring time (May). Hopefully, the rest of the machine was built properly so as to avoid any possible malfunctions.

Does this give credence to the doomsdayers who say that you can never know what to expect from such a device? Does this bring into question some of the safety issues involved?

I for one am all for this machine. I don't think that it will open up a blackhole that devours our corner of the Milky Way, however, with the amount of energy required to run the machine, I'm a little worried about some of the more "traditional" safety issues (ie. is this thing gonna blow?!).

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Gamechanger

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While I do believe that certain discoveries that may/will be made by this machine can be subject to a gag-order, this is most likely not the case with this incident.

This bad connection occurred 9 days after they started the machine and well before the first actual collision was to take place. Essentially, they were still in warm-up mode.

I wonder what type of discoveries could/would be subject to a blackout, though.

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