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[23 Sep 2008 | Comments Off | ]

It is hard out there for the Large Hadron Collider. A magnet failure that happened last Friday caused a tonne (about 2205 pounds) of liquid helium to spill out into the tunnels. The LHC contains 1200 dipole magnets throughout its structure. Super cooled helium is used to keep the magnets at a temperature lower than deep space (-456 degrees F to be exact) to make the magnets superconductors. It is speculated that a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets allowed them to warm up to the point that …