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Dec 5, 2008 | 13
It's official! The hobbled Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be up and running again by next summer, according to CERN, the European lab for particle physics where the mighty LHC resides.
The info is part of a new report released today by the agency on the September incident that shuttered the world's largest particle accelerator. CERN determined in October that the LHC was done in by an electrical malfunction shortly after its initial start-up that caused a helium leak in its tunnel.
Oct 16, 2008 | 3
Initial suspicions that a faulty electrical connection between two magnets inside the giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) caused a helium leak that ultimately shut down the machine have proved correct.
Mechanical damage from the September 19 electrical snafu caused the magnet to release helium into the particle accelerator's 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which operates the LHC, said today. CERN's investigation confirms its original explanation for the leak.
Sep 10, 2008 | 19
Forget black holes. Here's the real question about the Large Hadron Collider: How fast could it defrost a pizza?
The forward thinking editors at Scientific American was all over this question in the June 2007 issue. Our staff made an estimate based on the rate and energy of particle collisions when the machine's two beams meet head on. (SA actually considered lead ion beams—which the LHC will begin circulating in a few years—which would impart more energy than colliding protons.)
But the collision frequency refers to how often the beam particles run into other tiny beam particles, not pizza molecules, notes Peter Steinberg of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., a member of the US/LHC group blog. He suggests using the electric current of the beam to get its power (energy imparted per second).
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