Well crap - LHC down for a while
First there was the 30K power transformer, now it's a Helium leak.
From
BBC:
Hadron Collider forced to halt
Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work.
The failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.
The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.
The LHC beam will remain turned off over the weekend while engineers investigate the severity of the fault.
A spokesman for Cern told the BBC it was not yet clear how soon progress could resume at the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator.
While the failure was "not good news", he said glitches of this kind were not unexpected during testing.
And quite honestly, with a project this size I am amazed that things have gone this smoothly.
Looking forward to seeing some hard data!
Posted by DaveH at September 20, 2008 11:49 AM
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