May 21, 2013

Big engineering at work - the Muon g-2 magnet

That looks cool -- can I borrow it for a couple decades? From the Chicago Tribune:
Huge magnet set for delicate voyage to Fermilab
A 50-foot-wide circular electromagnet — so delicate that tilting it just a few degrees would destroy it — must make a four-week journey this summer off the U.S. coast and up a river, before inching its way by road to a new home at Fermilab in Batavia.

The Muon g-2 ring, an electromagnet made of steel and aluminum, begins its 3,200-mile trek from New York in early June. From there, it will sail by barge down the East Coast, around Florida's tip into the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River until it arrives in Illinois.

Once on land, the electromagnet will be driven at night in a specially designed truck at no more than 10 mph until it reaches Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The high-tech transport is all in service of a plan to use Fermilab's powerful beam to send muons, a rare kind of particle that lasts just 2.2 millionths of a second, into the circular electromagnet, according to experiment spokesman Lee Roberts, who works at Fermilab. Once in the ring, muons "wobble," or tilt like a top.

What scientists find could open up a whole new world of particle physics, said Roberts, a Boston University physicist.
Very cool -- the need for the move is not engineering stupidity. The magnet has been in use at Brookhaven since the 1990's but they were not getting clear data -- the beam of muons wasn't strong enough. Fermilab has an accelerator that is better for muons and the cost to ship ($3M) is an order of magnitude less than building a replacement magnet ($30M). Looking at first light around 2016. Posted by DaveH at May 21, 2013 8:59 PM
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