Atom-smasher delayed again

Atom-smasher delayed again

technology.iafrica.com

Researchers announced a new delay on Monday for the restart of Europe's Big Bang atom-smasher, saying the faulty multi-billion dollar machine would now be turned back on in late September.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
en.wikipedia.org
www.lhc.ac.uk

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Large Hadron Collider maybe not as harmless as first stated...

The new director is a lot more cautious than the old French one - could this be due to the reports recently that the Hadron Collider is not as harmless as first thought? Three physicists have stated that the black holes created could last as long as a second.
The latest delay in brining the Hadron online will mean that they will only be up to full power in 2010 the earliest.

technology.iafrica.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by deltaalphanovember


He is being cautious so as to not break the £4 Biilion machine they spent ages building, not because of some crackpot theories about destroying the planet....

They just want to make sure that what happened last year won't happen again and put it out of action for another 12-18 months. Takes a long time and alot of money to fix this behemoth if it does break.

reply to post by stumason


I agree on his being cautious - the last delay will ultimately cost 40 million Euros .
However, this is a machine that should not have broken so catastrophically in the first place. This is not an over sized contraption for making the perfect slice of toast and marmalade. This is a device that smashes atoms.

Humans built the Collider: humans are imperfect, the Collider is a new machine never before done, the Scientists cannot possibly hope to predict all the potential problems and outcomes as a result of running it a full power.

I am not one of those people that think it will cause the end of the world, but I do think the potential power that can be unleashed is a very real horror that faces us all.

reply to post by deltaalphanovember


They've already got fairly big colliders all over the world. This is a known technology, just with greater "atom smashing" speeds.

The reason it failed last time was not down to any "unknowns", but rather down to crappy welding/connection apparently. This caused an electrical fault in one of the huge magnet arrays, leading to a "quench", which is a change in the superconductivity of the magnet itself.

I think they should rename the atom smasher to the money smasher.
I just hope they get the result they need after wasting this amount of cash.
Imagine the lives this money could have saved.

I started reading about the collider through a co-worker a couple months ago, before it broke.

The latest I read was that one peice had broken on it pushing it back for quite some time, and now something else is broke?

The new director is a lot more cautious than the old French one - could this be due to the reports recently that the Hadron Collider is not as harmless as first thought? Three physicists have stated that the black holes created could last as long as a second.

Also, the black holes that are being created? I haven't heard of anything about a black hole being created by using this machine. And aside from that, (last i checked) we still don't know what black holes DO.

Lots of theories, but no hard fact evidence. I could be wrong (i'm even questioning posting this), but I don't think anything can be confirmed about black holes.

Thanks for correcting my ignorance, I was not aware there more than one of these contraptions scattered all over the world.
This is just the "Big Daddy" of them all. I just read an article about another 6:

The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-round atom-smasher on the French-Swiss border, has been 14 years and several billion dollars in the making. The machine is designed to rev up opposing beams of particles to nearly the speed of light and smash them together. The debris, observed with detectors, including ATLAS shown here, will help scientists probe some of the deepest questions in science: What was the universe like moments after the Big Bang? What's the nature of dark matter? Why do only some particles have mass? Are there more dimensions than space and time? A few scientists are even concerned the collisions will create tiny black holes that destroy the earth. Click the "Next" arrow above to learn about six more atom-smashers that were at the cutting edge of science in their day.

Link

Bad welding eh? 17 miles of welding - I guess they need the extra time to make sure all those darn pesky welds will hold.

There was a faulty electronic wiring between magnets that caused the shutdown. Also because of the extremely low temperatures needed (1,9K or -271°C) there is a 3 month shut down period and 3 month start up period because they need to gradually adjust the temperature. A period where the repairmen just have to wait out.

These things take time and precision and I´m sure those that operate it will be more careful next time. Currently they are reviewing EVERYTHING inside to make sure they can start up normally. Because if it fails again it will be another 9 months of wasted startup/shutdown/startup period.