Cool short cut could speed LHC restart - physics-math - 25 June 2009 - New Scientist

Description

THE Large Hadron Collider (LHC), possibly science's greatest ever project, was undone in September by one badly soldered join . With 10,000 such joins around the accelerator's ring, it is proving a struggle to check them all in time to restart this autumn as hoped.

A splice between two sections of superconducting cable melted when the current was turned up. As well as repairing the one that failed, engineers have so far found and fixed 20 slightly under-par splices. It is a slow process as each of the LHC's eight sectors must be gently warmed from its 1.9 kelvin operating temperature to about 300 K to be checked and repaired.

The repairers are now testing if they can check the splices at a moderately cool 80 K. "We'll know by Tuesday," says LHC technical director Steve Myers. If so, the last three sectors can be screened much more quickly. Any urgent repairs will delay the start-up, but less serious faults could be left and the LHC switched on anyway, perhaps at reduced energy.

Like what you've just read?

Don't miss out on the latest content from New Scientist.

Get 51 issues of New Scientist magazine plus unlimited access to the entire content of New Scientist online.

Subscribe now and save

Have your say

Comment title

Your name

Email

Comment

Temporal Vortex

a href=" (long URL - click here) Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks' /a

img src=" (long URL - click here)

This comment breached our terms of use and has been removed.

Temporal Vortex

http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.2696

Time Machine at the LHC

Authors: I.Ya. Aref'eva, I.V. Volovich

(Submitted on 15 Oct 2007 (v1), last revised 25 Oct 2007 (this version, v2))

Abstract: Recently, black hole and brane production at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been widely discussed. ...

Original URL

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227143.300-cool-short-cut-could-speed-lhc-restart.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227143.300-cool-short-cut-could-speed-lhc-restart.html