LHC News
[Warning: Nerd Alert!]
The Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) operations halted in September 19, 2009 (just a little over one week after proton beams were successfully circulated in its main ring for the first time in September 10, 2009) due to a serious fault between two superconducting magnets. Electrical problems in the bus between two magnets caused parts of the superconducting coils to enter into a normal (resistive) state, causing that spot and the surrounding area to heat up, thereby pushing these other areas into normal states, too . This process is accompanied by a loud bang as the energy of the magnetic field is converted to heat, vaporising massive amounts of liquid helium and damaging 53 magnets. The magnets had to be repaired or replaced and the affected 8 sectors warmed up and then cooled down again before the LHC becomes operational again.
image from CERN
It has been more than a year and now, the LHC is on it's final cooling stage (see CERN Bulletin released 10/05/2009 here)! Just one more week of cooling down and then operations will resume on mid-November! Yey!
If all goes well, key physics questions about the Higgs boson, the Grand Unification Theory, gravity, sypersymmetry, quarks, antimatter, dark matter and extra dimensions in string theory might be answered. Cool!
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