Large Hadron Collider Out of Commission – No Restart Until at Least June 2009

When mankind achieves something with the level of sophistication of the Large Hadron Collider, it makes us understand how much we can achieve. When something goes wrong, in a big way, it brings us back to Earth, knowing that anything made by humans can have problems, and that, despite our best efforts, we are fallible.

The sad thing about the damage done at the LHC is that it comes at a time when money is short, all over the world, and the will to spend on things that, to the average person on the street, are nebulous and inconsequential, is low.  The damage total thus far is homing in on $25 million, which, even in this time of declining fortunes, is some real money.

Beyond the cost is the notion that these devices aren’t built with an idea of failure, so spare parts aren’t accrued while building them. The 53 magnet assemblies are huge, and not available at Radio Shack.

from VNUNET

CERN has issued its final report (PDF) on the failure of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and has said that the device cannot be restarted before June 2009.

The LHC had barely begun operating when a connection between two huge magnets burnt out. This caused a ton of liquid helium to be released, damaging 53 of the magnets which are used to direct the proton stream around the 27km instrument.
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“We have a lot of work to do over the coming months, but we now have the roadmap, the time and the competence necessary to be ready for physics by summer,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans.

“We are currently in a scheduled annual shutdown until May, so we are hopeful that not too much time will be lost.”

To prevent the same problem happening again, the LHC is to be upgraded with an early warning system for gas leaks. This will mean the installation of 100 miles of cabling and 2,000 electronic sensors at a cost of around $25m (£16m).

“The top priority for CERN today is to provide collision data for the experiments as soon as is reasonably possible,” said CERN director-general Robert Aymar. “This will be in the summer of 2009.”

The only possible goodness out of this disaster is that the people at FermiLab may find the Higgs boson before CERN, which would be a victory for the dear old US of A.

Hail the red, white and blue – and American persistence!

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To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.Elbert Hubbard