Big particle collider repairs to cost $21 million

Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least 25 million francs ($21 million) and may take until early summer, its operator said Monday.

news.yahoo.com...

I have not heard about anything of the apparent problem of the LHC.
Must of been dozing or something...

"So, will it be worth the efforts afforded by the years and experience put into it? Or will it be the infamous new technology Hindenberg?"

Guess we will have to wait and see until next summer, sometime, I guess.

Heres another place I found, though it is a blog area, it is really indepth:

LHC update - September 20, 2008
It seems that as the magnetic fields were being increased in the machine as part of the commissioning (there was no beam in the machine at the time) there was a massive quench in sector 3-4 of the machine. A chart of the spectacular temperature rise can be seen here. According to the Resonaances blog
LHC-progress addicts report that pretty scaring entries were appearing in the LHC logbook this morning (fire alarm, power failure, helium leaking into the tunnel), though all the record seems to be deleted now.

blogs.nature.com...

Heres another article from oct. of this year stating that it was a manamde fault for the colliders breakdown.

Large Hadron Collider broke down because of bad soldering on a single connection
The £4.4 billion Large Hadron Collider was put out of action for months because one electrical connection out of 10,000 was badly soldered, the experiment's chief scientist said.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

So, if it was a deffective weld/solder, will it still be remained to see if it does actually work as it is supposed too?

National geographic has its take on this as well.

"What we know indicates there was a faulty connection between two cables joining two magnets together that warmed up to the point of melting and that resulted in helium being leaked into the tunnel," said James Gillies, a spokesperson for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which operates the machine.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

After reading the aricles of interest, I have concluded that the best efforts are at hand, and for that, this is why I went through the "Edit" to conclude the device will be "trouble-shoot" situation for the next few months.

I do hope it gets worked out, since hearing of the firing of the LHC, I am in anticipation of far reaching results and hope we can unfold some of the pasts secrets.

Thanks for reading this thread!!


Seems as if it will be even longer for a definate answer to exactly what had taken place during the failure(s) that had occurred??

[edit on 013030p://1274 by Allred5923]

If it does'nt work throw more money at it....

them and they're expensive toys

I'm going to ask santa for a large hadron collder for christmas....

[edit on 17-11-2008 by Dar Kuma]

Originally posted by Dar Kuma
If it does'nt work throw more money at it....

them and they're expensive toys

Hold the flames...

Superconducting magnets are delicate technology and it's a shame that a particular element of the design was not properly engineered to guarantee it to be totally fail-safe. But that's hi-tech for you. You can't have cutting edge tech without running certain risks.

Indeed, repairs will be time consuming and costly. I just came back from CERN and that's what I heard there.

reply to post by buddhasystem


When I initially created this thread, I had failed to go through a thorough and unbias exam of it, turns out you are correct buddhasystem.

It is truly a delicate and tedious procedure of doing what they are attempting to do.

Thanks for the imput budd!!

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by Dar Kuma
If it does'nt work throw more money at it....

them and they're expensive toys

Hold the flames...

Indeed, repairs will be time consuming and costly. I just came back from CERN and that's what I heard there.

And what about the repairs to the allready overstretched starting to fail infrastructure....

I was looking into more of the stories from both sides of the proverbibial fence here on this topic and ran across a few of the other so called stories of "Doom and Gloom" scenarios for the firing of the LHC initially from it's first start up, but then wrote all of the ney sayers off as possibly being a bit paranoid of the potential effects of the LHC being fired.
Then I thought to myself "What if there is any truth to the people and the PTB of CERN to cover up possible realized consequences and had had it's fare share of problems even before the firing event took place?"
On further study of this event of the LHC having it's problems, turn's out that there had been "Situations" that had taken place even before the LHC had been initially fired:

Oddly after the BBC discovered the massive quench of about 100 magnets in a log entry on a CERN website, "the entry has since been removed" according to TimesOnline the day after.

When the Timesonline statement had been removed, it seems as if there could have been a retraction of the original diagnosis of what had taken place during the failure of the device...
A day later Dr. James Gillies had made a new statement of the effects of the failure with less dramatic conclusions:

The only piece of real news by CERN's chief spokesman, Dr James Gillies, who does the standard tour of the major media outlets to reassure journalists, outside of his department's press releases, was about the damaged magnets in question that he identified as giant quadrupoles, in the Telegram UK, September 20th. Later the probably melted connection turned out to be a busbar, a type of reinforced splice of magnet ribbon cable, one of many such connections between magnets.

Why the retraction of Timesonline story just to rerelease another statement the very next day?

Is there truly more to know about the validity of the LHC being as safe and nesseccary as the scientific world proposed it to be?

CERN publicly has put on a brave if vague face, with its first very short press release of the 20th September, "Incident in LHC sector 3-4", though it was abundantly clear the day of the accident September 19th that it was more than an incident, as reported by the BBC that day. Even on the day of the accident, according to Scientific American, "CERN said on Friday that "The LHC is on course for [its] first collisions in a matter of weeks", just a day later it announced the minimum two-month repair job." Lately Dr Robert Aymar, Director General of CERN referred to the accident as "undoubtedly a psychological blow."

The excerts I have taken for this post are from the same site, they have a well written and kind of disturbing article in it's full discription and text. I suggest one to read the entiriety of this story for too see if it is a validated acceptance for these acqusations being no more than dribble, or possibly being something nothing less than fact for the CERN team and thier coherts of the LHC being legitimately safe or a more difficult venture then they had hoped for?

bigsciencenews.blogspot.com...

Not to try and create a "End of the World" thread, but is there anyone of you guy's out there that think there could be a hidden agenda of the possible effects of the LHC actually being more harmful than good, or possibly the LHC being found defective for practical use?

Being's they didn't actually have a successful firing of the set date of Sept. 10th, and having the complications they are having even before the initial firing, "Is there more than what meets the eye to this experiment?"

Opinions?

My personal opinion is that they could be doing something more constructive than making a large machine to smash atoms to destruction.

Whats it for really, To find out how our own system was probably made, gimmie a break.

There's far more important things to do.

The experiment itself is very interesting to me, what I was trying to get at is "Being's the so called "Initial" firing was null and void from true expectations, and when they do get it running properly, will there be a more devastating outcome for the scientists that have spent their lives designing it?"
As far as I can tell "CERN" is a real stand up scientific community throughout the world, and if the LHC would turn out to be a failure, what is to become of the technology created for the advent of the "Worlds largest man made machine?"
But, then again, in 50 or so years, it could possibly be an episode of the "Cities of the Underworld" on the Sci-Fi channel..

Originally posted by Dar Kuma
My personal opinion is that they could be doing something more constructive than making a large machine to smash atoms to destruction.

Whats it for really, To find out how our own system was probably made, gimmie a break.

There's far more important things to do.

Like what? The physical sciences ain't going to reveal their secrets themselves. There will always be people, and they'll always have problems, but if we don't keep advancing science at the current rate, the world as we know it will have to end because our lifestyles are quite obviously unsustainable.

And it's purpose is to make discoveries about what matter *IS*. To understand what gravity is. To ultimately help formulate a physical theory of everything, which would allow any newly discovered phenomena to be explained by a simple mathematical interpretation. Modern physics is far from complete, as any physicist will tell you.

That knowledge has unmeasurable value, certainly far more than the meager billions spent on the LHC; The amount spent on it in 25 years is equal to the amount spent on two weeks of the iraq war. Frankly, I value a chance at ultimate knowledge of the workings of the universe more than half as much as I value having our armed forces injure and kill a bunch of people who I don't care about.

That knowledge has unmeasurable value, certainly far more than the meager billions spent on the LHC; The amount spent on it in 25 years is equal to the amount spent on two weeks of the iraq war.

I agree, the war does cost more than it's worth, but, lets not "POop on the Troops" in this thread.

If by chance the scientists are correct about the HIGGS partical, the door will be swung wide open for possible applications of our sustainable life styles. But , then again, I hope this doesn't take the drastic turn of the ney sayer's being right for a catastrophic event, both around the LHC and the public/ global community.

Have to wait and see I guess.

Originally posted by Allred5923

If by chance the scientists are correct about the HIGGS partical, the door will be swung wide open for possible applications of our sustainable life styles.

Actually, even if it shows they are wrong about the Higgs boson, it will have been worth doing and might well still result in further applications.

Also keep in mind that the search for the Higgs boson is not the only experiment that is part of the LHC - there are at least 6 main areas of investigation, including, super-symmetry, other dimensions, dark matter, anti-matter, cosmic-rays, and of course the conditions at the start of the universe!

I'll bet that's just scratching the surface too, and there are countless (well perhaps not countless, but lots anyway) smaller experiments that could have payoffs for all of us.

I'll bet that's just scratching the surface too, and there are countless (well perhaps not countless, but lots anyway) smaller experiments that could have payoffs for all of us.

Thanks for the great reply C.H.U.D.,

I do know that this attempt will be beneficial for many walks of life, as far as science, and possibly the a major change for the way things are done as of today's standards.

I will have to look into the possible applications for a more detailed explanation but you were dead on with your input and thanks for bringing that to light on this thread!!

Atleast they are not bailing-out the fat cats and corporate whores.

Not a oneliner.

Originally posted by forshow
Atleast they are not bailing-out the fat cats and corporate whores.
Not a oneliner.

I went to the LHC website to see how they were managing to get the monies needed for the repairs to it, and apparently they have their proverbial eggs in a row. They have back up financial surplus from backers from all different groups and communities.
I think they said in the report they had a surplus of approx. 227M for just such emergency and research funding, I'd have to look it up again to verify for you though, but they have it covered already, "No corporate whoring" with the LHC, just interested backers.

reply to post by Allred5923


Glad I could contribute Allred

After looking at my reply again, I'm left feeling that I wasn't explicit enough and I could have expanded a bit more on my first statement:

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.
Actually, even if it shows they are wrong about the Higgs boson, it will have been worth doing and might well still result in further applications.

Just in case it wasn't clear, what I'm trying to say is that even a negative result has value. We gain experience whatever the outcome. It's often possible to learn more from our mistakes than it is from our successes. First of all they point out that we're are going in the wrong direction, but they also lead us in new directions that we might not otherwise have thought of, although we might not find what it was we were initially searching for - it's still another piece of the puzzle.

Although I don't think anyone here is under the illusion that the LHC will provide the answer to life, the universe and everything, I think its worth noting that theres a good chance some of the technologies developed due to discoveries made by LHC experiments to lead to a major leap in technology, perhaps even on a greater scale than we have experienced in the micro-chip revolution.

I think it's hard to tell what potential benefits some of the research being done will bring us, just as no one had any idea what use the discovery of sub-atomic particles would be, but that lead to TV, computers, and much of the technology our society is based on today. Can you imagine living with out what we have today? By the same token, I think it's also nearly impossible to predict what technology tomorrow's discoveries will bring.

The potential for profound changes in our society is there I think. We are living in very exciting times my friends

Originally posted by Allred5923
I agree, the war does cost more than it's worth, but, lets not "POop on the Troops" in this thread.

Oh I don't mean it like that; I'm just being absurdly reductionist. As armed forces, their job is to defend their country and it's interests, and being armed forces, the means by which they do that is by injuring and killing people (and by deterrence, from their very presence). Almost always, the people they are injuring and killing are trying to injure and kill them right back.

I don't really care about Iraq, though, because though on paper it had a significant military presence, it had already shown itself to be rather ineffective with it, and, lacking a navy to rival our own, or an ICBM fleet, it lacked any means to do meaningful damage to America. About the worst it could possibly do is release a biological warfare agent, but I'm sure they'd know that it would eventually spread to themselves. Saddam Hussein was kind of a dick, but he wasn't insane.

If we spent 12 billion a month on the physical sciences, I daresay we'd have some interesting knowledge by now. But spending 12 billion a month on stabilizing a country we destabilized in the first place only nets a stabilized country in the end; perhaps it's government will be more just and amenable to our purposes to boot, but the results won't be worth the cost.

reply to post by Allred5923


I've been wondering the same since they shut down LHC. How come nobody goes making threads like "LHC's hidden agenda", specially the same people which said this thing would compromise the entire planet.

So, it's odd to me too... and I kept wondering as well, maybe they DO have a hidden agenda which are conducting right now... who knows?
But even more interesting is the fact that I found no conspiracionists talking about this.

If by chance the scientists are correct about the HIGGS partical, the door will be swung wide open for possible applications of our sustainable life styles.
Have to wait and see I guess.

Seen posted around CERN recently

Originally posted by mdiinican

Originally posted by Allred5923
I agree, the war does cost more than it's worth, but, lets not "POop on the Troops" in this thread.

Oh I don't mean it like that; I'm just being absurdly reductionist. As armed forces, their job is to defend their country and it's interests, and being armed forces, the means by which they do that is by injuring and killing people (and by deterrence, from their very presence). Almost always, the people they are injuring and killing are trying to injure and kill them right back.
If we spent 12 billion a month on the physical sciences, I daresay we'd have some interesting knowledge by now. But spending 12 billion a month on stabilizing a country we destabilized in the first place only nets a stabilized country in the end; perhaps it's government will be more just and amenable to our purposes to boot, but the results won't be worth the cost.

Thanks for your clarification mdiinican.
When reading ones posts, without a mono-a-mono conversation in a physical nature, it does tend to get hard deciphering one's true intentions of a conversation, "No offense to you as well mdi!!"

The quotes you had stated above are very factual, and pondered by hundreds of us for different applications around the world, you know hunger, medical, sciences, etc. And is an admirable conscientious awareness, unfortunately, we will probably never have that kind of conscious thinking for the multitudes of the world, though we don't close our eyes to the worlds situation, we divert our resources to other places that don't seem as "Applicable" as the current standing of indifferent countries and/or religious affiliations of or for agreements.

I wish I had a fraction of that kind of cash, it would get me anywhere I wanted to go with little efforts on my part!!