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Serious Magnet Failure at CERN's New Accelerator

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Mar 31, 2007 09:57 AM
from the smashing-atoms dept.
News Science
GrepNut writes "CERN is reporting that the giant magnets that steer the particle beam in the new and highly anticipated Large Hadron Collider have just failed catastrophically in a stress test, apparently due to a design oversight. It doesn't help that the magnets were designed and built by CERN's US competitor Fermilab." While safety precautions were followed, and no one was injured nor were any rifts in the space-time continuum opened, it's still a rather large setback for the project.
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Serious Magnet Failure at CERN's New Accelerator 50 Comments More /

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  • The part was destroyed and subsequently compressed into a singularity by the black hole that the device created.

    • Re:What actually happened (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2007, @11:41AM (#18556367)
      Uh...it's probably not a problem...probably...but I'm showing a small discrepancy in...well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining sequence...
      • There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable.

        There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

  • There were no injuries (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:01AM (#18555645)
    But all credit cards within a 10-mile radius were erased.

  • Just reverse the polarity (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:04AM (#18555665)
    ...and make sure there aren't any redshirts around the next time you install it.

  • Important safety tip (Score:5, Funny)

    by rheman1 (301503) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:06AM (#18555685)
    How many time do I have to tell you: Don't cross the streams!

  • Oddone will speak again (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where would someone called Oddone work if not at a place that creates black holes.

  • Fidgeting magnets... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wakaranai (87059) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:16AM (#18555777)
    Hmm.... sounds nasty.

    Each of the ~1200 superconducting magnets is about 50 foot long. There's a photo here showing one being put in place (March 2005):
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7119458/ [msn.com]

  • Not Magnet Failure (Score:5, Informative)

    by AmIAnAi (975049) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:22AM (#18555827)
    From TFA:


    "The failure does not concern the magnets or the cold masses themselves, but rather their assembly in the cryostat."

    I know we don't read TFA here, but is it too much for the submitter to get past the first paragraph.

    • Not Magnet Failure?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by IvyKing (732111) on Saturday March 31 2007, @11:03AM (#18556125)
      I've been involved in the design and construction of several magnets for NMR use - and the supporting structure is usually considered to be part pf the magnet - including the cryostat used in supercons.


      The interesting part of the article was that the cryostat design was reviewed by CERN personnel, so the issue of asymmetric loading on the cryostat was overlooked by more than just Fermilab. Sounds like and "Oh shit - nobody thunk of that" moment.

    • not to mention this line from the same FA:

      "At this point the consequences, if any, for the LHC schedule are not yet known."

  • Apparently... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DiamondGeezer (872237) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:26AM (#18555857) Homepage
    ...they're going to boost the mass spectrometer to 105% (for the extra resolution). It should be fine just so long as they follow standard insertion procedure...but you don't need to know that - everything will be fine.
  • Help me Gordon Freeman!

  • It all started when... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kpainter (901021) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:46AM (#18555995)
    "...research associate Gordon Freeman pushes a crystalline specimen into the beam of an over-charged anti-mass spectrometer, the experiment triggers a resonance cascade, which causes severe structural damage to the entire facility and severs communications with the outside world, and within much of the facility itself..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Research_F acility#.22The_Black_Mesa_Incident.22 [wikipedia.org]

  • Intelligent design at work! (Score:5, Funny)

    by master_p (608214) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:47AM (#18556003)
    God does not want us to dig a hole into His universe! that's why the new accelerator will never work!

  • It was a... (Score:3, Funny)

    by master_p (608214) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:59AM (#18556083)
    ...resonance cascade failure! :-)

  • The article seems to place the full blame on Fermilab's poor design. I will withhold judgement until all the facts are known. Did CERN provide specific requirements for asymetric load bearing capacity? If there were no requirements provided to Fermilab, then it would seem to me to be a problem at the CERN end.

    • Re:Anti US Slant (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Asic Eng (193332) on Saturday March 31 2007, @01:06PM (#18557085)
      No, putting the blame for a specific problem on some US organization is not "anti US". Everybody makes mistakes, and it's good engineering practice to accept responsibility for them when that happens. Fermilab thinks that the problem occured on their side, and they are trying to solve it.

      Working in a multi-national company with multi-national customers and designing safety-critical systems, I have some experience with handling mistakes. The best approach solving these technical issues, is to keep political games at bay as much as possible. Investigate thoroughly, take responsibility if you own the problem, then work on solving it. Once you start thinking "it's just that the other guys hate us" you've already lost. Any discussion will turn into a political slugfest, and lots of time will be wasted. The flipside is that you also need to keep good records - if someone tries to blame you for something you didn't do, you should have material to nip that in the bud. That works much better once you've gained a reputation for owning up to your own problems, btw.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Asic Eng (193332)
          Putting the blame on another organization without having conducted a thorough investigation _is_ "anti US".

          At the very most it would be "anti that other organization".

          Actually - Fermilab thinks no such thing.

          Yes, they do. It's their press release, and their current thinking is that it's their fault. They may be mistaken, and probably hope they are, but they think it's their fault.

          CERN _is_ making gratuitous :anti US" statements.

          As pointed out many times in this discussion: the text posted at CER

      • Or maybe they got too many. Not all H-1B's are geniuses, nor are all Americans engineers are idiots, contrary to popular belief. Who knows. But this is going to be a finger-pointing session of Biblical proportions that will probably take years to shake out, and I expect it will spill over into the international politics / diplomatic scene and cause yet another U.S./European rift no matter who was actually at fault.

        If the magnets were built to spec, and if proper engineering practices (such as design revi

  • Give me a break (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stox (131684) on Saturday March 31 2007, @11:13AM (#18556187) Homepage
    The forces induced in these magnets during a quench is obscene. Given the size of the LHC, I would guess that these are the largest such magnets ever fabricated. When pushing the envelope so hard, failures are going to happen. It amazes me that the public's quality expectations are so high for such work. If Windows was built to the same standards, it would have uptimes measured in centuries.
    • It amazes me that the public's quality expectations are so high for such work. If Windows was built to the same standards, it would have uptimes measured in centuries.

      That's why software programmers are not engineers.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ScrewMaster (602015)
        No, it's why software engineers aren't just programmers. The problem is that large mechanical engineering is done to standards that are well-understood and don't change that much. Software is much more of a moving target. Eventually, though, computing will become more mature, more stable ... and the job of engineer will take on more of its traditional meaning when applied to software development.

        Of course, at about that time we'll have invented a true AI and people won't be programming anymore. Hopefully

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Theaetetus (590071)
          Windows is far, far more complex than a magnet, or any other physical thing ever built.

          I disagree, and offer the ISS, the Internet, the Pentium that Windows is running upon, an Oil drilling platform, CERN, etc.

          The point is, software programming is at the stage where electrical engineering was a century ago: tinkerers, with no real standards, trying new things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they explode. It was an exciting time, but it wasn't engineering. That didn't happen until standards came about,
  • I am imagining that just before failure the fellow at the controls was muttering...

    "I'm Giving Her All She's Got, Captain ... She canna take much more of this, Captain"
  • ...is wrong. Should be the "Oh Sh*t!" department. Seems like the same kind of situation as when the Hubble Telescope was launched with the bad mirror and it's likely just as bad news for the forward progress of scientific knowledge. Says the article: "failure to account for the asymmetric loads in the engineering design of the magnet appears to be a likely cause..."
     
        Sounds like it is a big problem, not a small one.
  • Did anyone else read that as hardon collider?
  • Anyone else reminded of the video game Out of this World [wikipedia.org] when they read this?

    *pines for the days of playing video games*

  • Interesting how this came out just a day after the ATLAS software and computing meetings in Munich concluded. I bet there are some interesting discussions happening there right now among the attendees that are still in town.

  • redundant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smoker2 (750216) on Saturday March 31 2007, @12:05PM (#18556585) Homepage Journal
    Who the fuck tagged this "news" and "science" ?

    It's on a news site in the science section !

    WTF ?
    • In all fairness the "Big Dig" was not just the tunnel - but also a reconstruction of the in-city highway system to free up a chunk of land previously obstructed by the highway. Working inside a busy city did not come cheap..

      But yes, lots of things were done inefficiently.

    • Re:Got what they deserved (Score:4, Informative)

      by gathas (588371) on Saturday March 31 2007, @11:01AM (#18556101)
      I think the 2+ miles under the harbor was actually the most trivial part of the project, being completed well ahead of and opened earlier than the rest of the project. The real challenge was building the new underground roads and associated bridges, ramps etc. while keeping the existing transportation infrastructure operational (albeit in a limited form). They had to deal with building close to existing subway tunnels, dealing with soil that was all landfill, and hitting archaeological sites. The project was certainly wrought with corruption, but to imply that it was somehow inefficient by comparing the length of the roads developed makes little sense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't these people know the 6+ mile Boston "Big Dig" with only 2+ miles under the harbor has so-far cost almost as much as the 31-mile Chunnel?

      Hrm, maybe that has something to do with that the Chunnel is 2 miles of interesting parts and 29 miles of a simple tunnel? Not to mention that the Big Dig was a complete renovation of an old infrastructure while keeping the city running at the same time.

    • Oh, crap. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swschrad (312009) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:45AM (#18555987) Homepage Journal
      Fermilab has built electromagnets for many particle accelerators, including SLAC. They are apparently the only source. If you want something else, you have to go to TDK in Japan for fixed-intensity ceramic magnets.

      According to an old neighborhood buddy of mine who is at SLAC, when he was in redesign of the linear accelerator in the 80s, those were the only two bids. For flexibility, they went with Fermi and electromagnets.

      And they haven't failed yet.

      While we're whining about cars, you can't keep headlamps and taillamps in a VW, wiring issues burn 'em out. nobody's perfect. that's why you negotiate warranties in the contracts for stuff.

      no wonder you don't dare sign your name. which, BTW, is quite imperfect in itself. Can't stand on the courage of your convulsions, as a rabid right-wing wacko radio commenter used to say.

    • Re:kinda funny, really... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Dunbal (464142) on Saturday March 31 2007, @12:40PM (#18556863)
      so why wasn't this tagged "ha ha" ?

            We're saving the ha-ha for when Switzerland disappears and the remaining crater is filled with a large strawberry shortcake with extra anchovies.

      • Re:kinda funny, really... (Score:5, Informative)

        by barakn (641218) on Saturday March 31 2007, @03:33PM (#18558437)
        Such chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling hysteria is unwarranted. The collision energies in the LHC are expected to be 14 TeV when using protons. The flux of cosmic rays of energy greater than 1 TeV is 100 per year per square meter of the Earth's surface. That works out to about 1.6 billion such cosmic rays per second around the globe. The collision energies in the LHC are expected to be 1,150 TeV for lead. The flux of cosmic rays of energy greater than 100,000 TeV is one per century per square kilometer of the Earth's surface. With a surface area of ~500,000,000 km^2, that's 5 million cosmic rays per year with energies at least a hundred times greater than the LHC collision energy.

        Nature has been performing experiments in our atmosphere for 4.55 billion years at energies much higher than we could hope to attain in a collider. If it was possible for a black hole spawned in one of these event to swallow the Earth (or whatever other nightmare scenario you've envisioned), it would have already happened and you wouldn't be around to discuss it.

        Reference 1 [wikipedia.org]
        Reference 2 [caltech.edu]

        • Re:worst case scenario (Score:5, Informative)

          by scheme (19778) on Saturday March 31 2007, @01:13PM (#18557157)

          The difference is that the closest black hole in the universe is lightyears away (at least that is the current conception) and the universe seems to be balanced out perfectly so all the dangerous stuff that is floating around doesn't consume the whole universe. It's a careful setup of universal laws that keep it together, just like the ecosystem on earth did for thousands of years.

          There are cosmic particles hitting the atmosphere with more energy than the LHC will produce. If the LHC were going to cause a rift in the space time continuum, these particles would have done the same in the last 6 billion years that they've been hitting the atmosphere.

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