Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have announced that the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will be off-line for at least five to six months. According to a press release issued Wednesday by CERN, an electrical failure between two of the accelerator’s massive magnets caused a helium leak that requires a complete shutdown of operations in order to make repairs.
The news is disappointing to the global community of particle physicists, who hoped that recent low-level test firings of the accelerator would usher in a new era of experiments aimed at understanding the origins of our universe.
In a press release about the incident, CERN Director General Robert Aymar expressed confidence that scientists will be able to get up and running smoothly in the early spring.
“Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow,” Aymar said. “Nevertheless, the success of the LHC’s first operation with beam[s] is testimony to years of painstaking preparation and the skill of the teams involved in building and running CERN’s accelerator complex.”
CERN spokespeople were unavailable to elaborate on the current status of repairs.
A Cold, Expensive Search for ‘Dark Matter’
Initially, scientists thought the LHC malfunction was limited to a faulty electrical transformer, which was quickly replaced. However, additional inspection revealed that the transformer failure had caused extensive wiring damage.
The estimated two months to repair the wiring will bring the LHC to the start of its normal winter shutdown. The 17-mile circular machine straddles the French/Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, and winter conditions make maintenance and work on the $6 billion accelerator difficult.
James Gillies, spokesperson for CERN, told news organizations earlier this week that although the shutdown was unfortunate, scientists at most will lose three to four weeks of lower-power operations. He…
why next spring why not now
why do you want to know about earth’s birth is it useful it is going to blast if you do such exp-s
is it worthful
it is going to take many people’s lives
think propely and take good decession