• #megaaccidents

    LHC Shut Down After a Ton of Liquid Helium Leaks into Tunnel

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the mega-physics experiment in Switzerland where atomic particles will be smashed into each other, has been shut down. The BBC reports that a fault opened up in one of the underground tunnels this morning, releasing one ton of liquid helium into the tunnels. This in turn caused 100 supercooled magnets crucial to LHC experiments to heat up and fail (the liquid helium is what keeps the magnets cool). After the successful first startup of the LHC last week, does this mean it could be months or years before another beam gets shot through the vast underground structure? More »
    09/19/08
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