Work Order LHC engineers install new superconducting magnets to bend protons around the 17-mile collider. Courtesy Cern

Before scientists can put the Large Hadron Collider back to work this month solving the mysteries of particle physics, the LHC’s engineers face critical repairs to the $5-billion device. First up: Fix the 53 superconducting magnets trashed in September 2008 when a power cable broke, causing the magnets to warm above their –458˚F operating temperature and lose conductivity, or “quench.” Then pipes for helium coolant melted, further damaging the magnets. Here, the other key upgrades and a few of the thousand chores still to go:

  1. Drill eight-inch relief valves into half of the 1,232 dipole magnets that steer the proton beam around the track, to allow for a controlled pressure release in case of another leak.
  2. Install a new quench-protection system, which is 1,000 times as sensitive as its predecessor and shuts off the accelerator if it detects an abnormal voltage increase—an indicator of a heat spike.
  3. Search for and eliminate electrical faults between the magnets—especially where the cables join—which could increase electrical resistance, causing the cables to overheat and melt.
  4. Cool the entire 17-mile track back down to –458˚F with liquid helium. (Engineers brought the sections up to room temperature so they could work inside the tunnel.)
  5. Ramp up the current in the magnets from a couple hundred amps to 6,000 over a few weeks. During this time, test the quench-protection system by intentionally overheating the magnets.
  6. Perform the final machine check, covering some 10,000 items, such as the systems that inject the proton beam into the collider and extract it within 1/5,000 of a second if a magnet fails.

26 Comments

no biggy.

Cool now I can fix my basement collider it been broken for weeks and hard to find people who can fix it here in Alabama.

reminds me of my MRI scanner days , a quench was something you didnt want to happen and that was with just one magnet.

Cool now I can fix my basement collider it been broken for weeks and hard to find people who can fix it here in Alabama..
great

Just got my fingers crossed that everything runs OK this time when the LHC restarts. I’m not optimistic we will find the so called ‘god particle’ as I don’t think it exists, but I’m sure other unexpected discoveries will be made – seems to be the way progress is made.
Some new knowledge of how to solve the energy shortage, which is going to hit us in 50 years or so, would make the massive expenditure worthwhile. We’re lucky to be living in interesting times with robots, www.mp3hunting.com music search engines and LHC!:)

Cool now I can fix my basement collider it been broken for weeks and hard to find people who can fix it here in Alabama.
Regards,
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i've been thinking of ways to also fix my basement collider. finally i have found the right information that i need. it's been a couple of weeks since the collider was broken. i have tried everything, but to no avail. good thing Joe Holt, a friend of mine, have come across your article. thank you so much for this one. it really helps.

This is sweet.

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Cool now I can fix my basement collider it been broken for weeks and hard to find people who can fix it here in Alabama.

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Great minimalist designs. I'm a firm believer in the k.i.s.s. design method. After all, most of the biggest sites on the web use minimalistic designs, like Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. As long as it's a good user interface, minimalist design is a great choice.

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It's a great project that will up scientists on the new level. I wrote custom essays for www.professays.com about collider.

This accelerator marks the advancement of science and technology perhaps in the post information age.

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wow... experimenting on something is really expensive... How come that is worth 5 Billion dollars? It is really very expensive in just a single project

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This is very weird... we are struggling with our finances and here we are... spending billions on a crap of metal. Solve our economic problems first before anything else.

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"What a complete and utter waste of money. Hasn't ANYONE the sense or the power to stop this lunacy?", your ferrari mieten kidding right? People still don'tbelieve this thing is going to create a black hole and destroys us all? there is i have read a very small chance of this happening and if a black hole is created it will be destroyed with in a second thanks to hawking raditation Do some resaerch. Once the higs bosin particle is found we will understand more about the creation of the universe.

Yup, you need to be more careful about how you open the window, either use a more complex string of JavaScript to spawn a window with a different name or use a helper JavaScript function in the page to do that for you. Should be relatively straightforward to do.

Thanks, this Fix i will use, if i repair my http://auto-ready.com

Cool now I can fix my basement collider it been broken for weeks and hard to find people who can fix it here in Amsterdam.
Regards, Noak

Finger cross as I followed and read the said thoughts in here and I hope It will be fix sooner. This is useful for me. Thank you

I don't think it's ever been explained what went bang! Matter, energy, it doesn't matter what. Any way they want to slice it, if time is finite they have to accept that someone made something out of nothing at some point in time.
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>Cool now I can fix my basement collider
:))) Will be waiting for the post "How to make you own basement collider" ... Collider means smth mysterious to me.. I'm wondering, what news it will bring in the future? Maybe smth incredible! lol

Funny from urban dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Large%20Hadron%20Collider

I also wrote my technology essay about Large Hadron Collide like Milo Jones did. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected that it will address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing humanity's understanding of the deepest laws of nature.
I enjoyed writing about it, it's so fascinating things. Your post is very interesting indeed. Thanks.
By the way, here's my essay:
bestessayhelp.com/technology-essay

Thank you for this article, I finally have an idea to fix my Collider were broken, Thanks again..
God Bless..

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