Damage to CERN LHC: Breakdowns and Updates (April 2017)

[slow]

Hi. I search the internet for descriptions about damage to the CERN LHC. A news item, dated April 4, 2017, has appeared regarding an irreparable damage to the machine. Obviously I thought it was a joke. But I also did not find something that contradicts it. Can anyone provide any information about it?

 

[Drakkith]

The LHC is fully functional, so whatever damage may have occurred was not irreparable.
They actually exceeded their target for 2017 collisions (luminosity to be exact): https://home.cern/about/updates/2017/11/record-luminosity-well-done-lhc

 

[fresh_42]

Not to forget our own "live-ticker" (including damage reports, better: problems with the beams):
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/lhc-starts-2017-data-taking.915515/

 

[slow]

Drakkith , fresh_42 , thank you very much. Best regards.

 

[dlgoff]

Here are a couple of photos I found a few years ago of the LHC tunnel and an interconnect. I think they're cool.

 

[fresh_42]

Here are a couple of photos I found a few years ago of the LHC tunnel and an interconnect. I think they're cool.

If you like these, you might be interested in CERN's facebook feed: https://www.facebook.com/cern/
They have a funny game where they post a photo on Fridays and ask the community to guess what it is, with the solution posted on the next Monday.

 

[dlgoff]

If you like these, you might be interested in CERN's facebook feed: https://www.facebook.com/cern/
They have a funny game where they post a photo on Fridays and ask the community to guess what it is, with the solution posted on the next Monday.

Thank you. I've bookmarked your link and will be spending a lot of time there.

 

[ohwilleke]

Hi. I search the internet for descriptions about damage to the CERN LHC. A news item, dated April 4, 2017, has appeared regarding an irreparable damage to the machine. Obviously I thought it was a joke. But I also did not find something that contradicts it. Can anyone provide any information about it?

Are you referring to the Beech Martin accident (which happened in January of 2017 but was reported much later by some news outlets)?

 

[mfb]

Nothing special happened in the days around April 7th 2017. The machine operators went through the usual tests to prepare the machine for collisions.

@ohwilleke: That was 29th of April 2016 and in November 2016.

 

[slow]

Are you referring to the Beech Martin accident?

Hi. The incident attributed to the weasel affected a 66 KV electric power supply located outside the ring. An event of that kind can not cause damage that seems irreparable, even at first sight. That means that the news found in my search, in case of not being a joke, corresponds to a serious damage and, in that case, it has finally been repairable and that is why the LHC is working today. Best regards.

 

[mfb]

An event of that kind can not cause damage that seems irreparable, even at first sight.

Right, and it was repaired within a few days.

That means that the news found in my search, in case of not being a joke, corresponds to a serious damage and, in that case, it has finally been repairable and that is why the LHC is working today. Best regards.

The only serious damage happened in 2008 when some magnets lost their superconductivity rapidly - took a year to repair that.

 

[ohwilleke]

Hi. The incident attributed to the weasel affected a 66 KV electric power supply located outside the ring. An event of that kind can not cause damage that seems irreparable, even at first sight. That means that the news found in my search, in case of not being a joke, corresponds to a serious damage and, in that case, it has finally been repairable and that is why the LHC is working today. Best regards.

There were parody news stories posted post-Weasel that exaggerated it as catastrophic. It could be that satire infected the real news. Often the mistake happens when a rookie reporter in China or Russia doesn't realize that a U.S. or European story is a parody and reports it as fact. Then, the story makes it back into English media via the Chinese or Russian source striped out its obviously parody sourcing.

 

[websterling]

There was this, and several variants, that appeared last April. The first appeared on April 1. The language is very similar to that in the OP.
Reports State that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Has Been Irreparably Damaged

 

[Drakkith]

There was this, and several variants, that appeared last April. The first appeared on April 1. The language is very similar to that in the OP.
Reports State that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Has Been Irreparably Damaged

To quote the last sentence in the article:

Also, have a happy April Fool’s.

 

[websterling]

To quote the last sentence in the article

Yeah, but who reads to the end??

 

[mfb]

Who needs to read to the end to realize it is a joke?

 

[Drakkith]

Who needs to read to the end to realize it is a joke?

To be fair, I was about halfway through before I became seriously suspicious. The couple of odd things said prior to that, I chalked up to a serious mistake in the article (adding 1.3 miles to the device for example). There has been far more inaccurate reporting in the past.

 

[mfb]

Well, I'm not the average reader, but let's make a list:

However, as physicist John Colbert from the University of West Argenteuil notes, the 4,0oo,ooo trillion dollar operation was brought to a halt by an error in measurement.

The gross world product is about 100 trillion dollars. Clearly the LHC didn't cost 40,000 times that number. While I looked up the first number to get a proper comparison, it should be obvious that 4,000,000 trillion dollars (nearly $500 million per person on Earth) are a ridiculous number.

Probably an intentional pun: While Argenteuil exists (near Paris - doesn't have a university of West Argenteuil, however), "argent" is French for money.

Ultimately, the previous LHC was 17 miles (27 km) in length; however, in order to make it really effective, scientists decided to increase the size of the device by 1.3 miles (2.09 km).

The LHC is in a ring underground. You cannot make it longer without digging a completely new tunnel.

Professor Harry Kim, from the University of Upper Gananda, notes that there was some miscommunication between the American and non-American scientists in relation to this upgrade.

This is a reference to the Mars Climate Orbiter, a NASA mission which failed due to such a conversion error. The LHC is in Europe, it uses metric units exclusively.

Unfortunately, the error wasn’t noted until the physicists went to put the new section in the ground. As they attempted to lower this section into place, they quickly realized their error, as they hadn’t made a large enough hole, and (sadly) the new section was bent in half.

Lower a 3 km long object? You don't have to work with the LHC to see that this isn't going to happen.

Yet, scientists are not deterred. Kim said that we do have some options: “I think that, together, people are capable of nearly anything. And I can throw really hard. So if I try, and maybe some people help me train, I’m confident that…eventually…I can hurl subatomic particles together fast enough to accomplish the exact same thing as the LHC. Additionally, I can see this being an excellent team building exercise. Nothing brings people together quite like a big bang simulation.”

Yeah, I don't think I have to comment on the rest of the article.