Posted on 09/26/2008 5:42:03 AM PDT by Tulsa Ramjet
GENEVA — Scientists will have to wait until spring to use the world's biggest particle collider for groundbreaking research because repairs to damage will run into the laboratory's normal winter shutdown, the operators said Tuesday.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research earlier said an electrical failure Friday, nine days after the collider was first started, released a large amount of liquid helium into the tunnel.
Experts have gone into the 17-mile circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider to check on damage caused when an electrical connection between two magnets apparently melted, said James Gillies, spokesman for the organization, which is known as CERN.
But they have to wait several weeks before the temperature can be raised from near absolute zero so they can actually go inside the equipment and fully assess the damage, Gillies said.
"They're going to have to open up and really investigate what went on there," he said. "So that's going to be two or three weeks before we can put out something that we're sure of."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The wack job professor was probably right. A quasar was created, they don't know how to deal with it, and they are getting the U.S. shuttles ready for launch in early spring.
LHC ping
I can just picture a repair crew entering the helium filled tunnel singing “Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s off to work we go ...”
Was it one of these;
http://www.fixya.com/support/quasar/tv_combos
or one of the old ones with it’s “works in a drawer?”
If a wind chill factor calculation has the temperature as absolute zero, would all molecular activity stop or would it only feel like it did?
They’re probably going to open the collider up and find one very freeze dried mouse in the works.
"They're going to have to open up and really investigate what went on there," he said. "So that's going to be two or three weeks before we can put out something that we're sure of."
He said, in a really high voice.
LOL, very funny. Thanks, my first laugh of the day.
LMAO!!
Oh yeah, I forgot Robert Downey Jr. was in that movie.
“I can just picture a repair crew entering the helium filled tunnel singing”
Raise the price the EU pays for helium, a dwindling resource, to help us out of our financial crisis.
Not a bad idea, although I don't know about the dwindling part. Helium is extracted from natural gas, and we are sitting on a humongous field. Actually I'm a few 10s of miles, or a couple of counties, from the Big One (The Bartlett shale, but there is oil under me. The nearest pump is about 3 blocks away.
It would only feel like it did.
Assuming, of course, you lived long enough.
0 Kelvin is mighty cold.
In the scientific magazines lime C&EN we keep reading that we are running out because the government made some changes in their program. I don’t know if this is true or not.
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