The Large Hadron Collider got a little hot under the collar and one of the doohickeys melted and fused with one of the humdingers.
CERN spokesman James Gillies explained, “"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out.”
Interestingly enough, the device has to be at absolute zero to work, and that would be dangerous for repairs to be made in, so they have to up the temperature in order to fix these magnets. Sounds simple right? It will take them around two months to make these repairs due to how long it takes to change the temperature in the LHC. Moving the temperature up takes a few weeks, they then have to do the repairs, and then lowering the temperature eats up another few weeks.
On the other hand, the launch could be seen as a huge success as more than a billion people tuned in to watch it break. Sure it was anti-climatic, but even breaking is pretty interesting for this freezing metal monstrosity.
The Safety of the LHC
How the LHC Works
Facts and Figures
The LHC Experiments
Data from (TimesOnline)(CERN)
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