Short circuit at Large Hadron Collider slows return to matter-mauling

The eager Igors of CERN are going to have to wait a little longer before they try to destroy the universe: it turns out that the upgraded Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a short circuit in one of its dipole circuits. Mere days before the LHC's keenly-anticipated Earthproton-shattering return to operations, the main dipole …

[Destroy All Monsters]

No beam today, always beam tomorrow

Some additional links at Back from Break, as usual.

[Conundrum1885]

Re. diode

I've head of particles cohering together under some cold conditions, so the "blow out short" method could work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re. diode

Leaving plenty of scope for EL Reg subhead editors, "Large Hardon^H^H^H^Hdron Collider back up after quick blow job" etc.?

[james 68]

"...a small piece of metal has found its way into this tube and is making contact between the tube (earth) and one of the cables that leads to the diode.”

You would think that something so expensive would have included insulation on the cables.

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you plan to use for insulation in something that is cooled to near absolute zero?

[james 68]

Polytetrafluoroethylene to name but one.

Not even expensive (Teflon).

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

Number Five's Alive!

Oh, not that short circuit.

[Anonymous Coward]

A carelessly discarded KitKat wrapper by any chance ?

Boy do those things hurt your fillings.

[launcap]

> A carelessly discarded KitKat wrapper

Should have upgraded to lollipop then. Nice plastic wrappers!

[Paul Crawford]

At last!

Two beams at 6.5TeV? So finally they can turn it up to 11?

(Alas! No Spinal Tap icon to go with this)

[Colin 4]

Re: At last!

Or they could even turn it up to 13, if i remember my maths correctly ...

[Mark 85]

Re: At last!

As long as they don't cross the beams, all will be well....

[Paul Crawford]

Re: At last!

11, 12 even 13...

https://xkcd.com/670/

[Elmer Phud]

Delayed?

It can't be delayed!

Having consulted my Spirit Guide I was assured that the End Of The World [tm] was happening this week.

I've got £200 on it ffs!!

[Jimmy2Cows]

Sector 3-4

This one's not Homer's fault, then.

Was the other circuit that missed the 6.5TeV rating in Sector 7-G, perchance?

[Little Mouse]

It's a screw, isn't it?

"is due to a small piece of metal debris probably left over from the two-year-long upgrade work"

It's the IT equivalent of the "three second rule". If it drops out of reach and no-one else noticed you do it then it can be safely forgotten about.

[Graham Marsden]

"the main dipole circuit on sector 3-4 developed a fault to Earth"

"Yeah, there's your problem, Guv, these dipole circuits are always a bit dodgy and it looks like you've had some right cowboys in here.

[Sucks air through teeth]

"I can fix it, but it's going to cost you..."

[PassiveSmoking]

It's always the same whenever you get some building work done, the workmen leave junk everywhere. I hope they've checked the ATLAS for builder detritus too, otherwise there may be an embarrassing announcement soon that CERN have discovered that the Higgs Boson is composed of stale ham sandwiches and page three pinups.

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch it off and on again... always works for Microsoft

[eJ2095]

Thought it was stuffed full of metahumans?

Oh wait not turned on yet....

[Anonymous Coward]

LHC is science fraud

This mega-project was sold to taxpayers as a tool to discover new aspects of the universe - all it appears to have done so far is generate a few Terabytes of data that confirm what everyone already suspected - physicists have no clue about how the universe works, but they do know how to apply for grants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: LHC is science fraud

Thank you for sharing your analysis.

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to blow...

...anything. Thats' just the public plan.

The real plan is to create a wee black hole in the right place, and that'll take care of that particle.

[Conundrum1885]

Re. No need to blow...

Its complicated by being at 4K, they can warm it up a bit but much above 6K the nearly superfluid liquid helium starts to become gaseous and this could lead to another £xpen$ive helium venting incident which would be a "Very Bad Thing" (tm)

What they do *not* want to do at this stage is damage the ancillary equipment or quench a nearby quadrupole magnet because then they would need to retrain it from scratch and this could take weeks or longer if it has to be replaced.

The physics is fascinating and thoroughly documented on CERN's sites.

Re. inconclusive X-rays, has it not occurred to them to do a passive MRI scan of the magnet?

Its not like they are short of SQUIDs and liquid helium...

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

So, the fix plan it:

1. Blow down it and see if it comes out the end

2. Give it a bit of a thump and see if that sorts it out.

You can see why Sheldon is dismissive of engineers...

[The last doughnut]

This is clearly something that doesn't move but should. Therefore squirt on some WD40.

[Conundrum1885]

Its fixed

Current pulse sent that obnoxious short right to Grethor where it belongs.

Expect dimensional portal incursion any day soon, probably May 4th at 03.27 am just for the lol factor.

(Star Wars Day and all that)

Dibs on them contacting the strange and bizarre parallel Universe where Farage won the election by a landslide, or the even more bizarre one where Russia beat America to the Moon with their N1 nuclear ramjet, and now has bases on Mars.

Its entirely possible that the version of M-theory which posits that parallel Universes exist in *all possible* time periods is the correct one so this could also explain a lot of other unexplained phenomena.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as I predicted

"One of cross beams has gone out of skew on treadle!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tym0MObFpTI