Moue Magazine » LHC magnets http://www.mouemagazine.com/blog Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:00:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 LHC Down Until Spring 2009 http://www.mouemagazine.com/blog/2008/09/lhc-down-until-spring-2009/ http://www.mouemagazine.com/blog/2008/09/lhc-down-until-spring-2009/#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:31:42 +0000 Brandy Betz http://www.mouemagazine.com/blog/?p=773 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 they lost their superconducting abilities. This sort of “dethawing” is called a quench. 

To fix the problem, a team is going to head inside the tunnels. The LHC will have to be warmed sufficiently to allow for human entry. That process could take as little as a week. But the LHC facility shuts down for the winter- mostly to save on electricity- and a restart isn’t likely before that break.

]]> http://www.mouemagazine.com/blog/2008/09/lhc-down-until-spring-2009/feed/ 0