Large Hadron Collider Out of Action For at Least Two Months

Those of you concerned that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the super particle accelerator in Europe, will bring the world to an end with miniature black holes or strangelets can rest easy for two months. Death threats couldn't bring the project to a halt, but technical snafus? Yep.

The first incident occurred about 36 hours after the LHC fired up for the first time on Sept. 10th, but scientists didn't reveal the problem until this past Thursday. But the worst failure occurred on Friday, when one of the giant superconducting magnets that guide the protons through the collider tunnel failed. This led a leak of helium, which is used to cool the magnets to within 3.5 °F of absolute zero, into the tunnel.

In order to fix the problem, engineers will have to warm that section of the tunnel, and then cool it all the way back down to 3.5 degrees °F of absolute zero again. That takes time, a lot of it.

In a press release, CERN said:

A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.

Worse, the lab shuts down in the winter. However, a huge inauguration party scheduled for Oct. 21 will still take place. Wouldn't want to ruin the festivities, despite the failure, now would we?

At the very least, we would have to say the world's largest particle accelerator is anything but a "smashing success" (pun intended).