World’s Biggest Particle Smasher Springs a Leak
Sep 20th, 2008 | By David Harper | Category: TechnologyScienceNOW: Efforts to get the world’s new highest energy atom smasher up and colliding particles hit an unexpected snag today–just 9 days after physicists circulated the first particles through the $5.5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with astonishing ease.
At least one of the LHC’s more than 1700 superconducting magnets failed, springing a leak and spewing helium gas into the subterranean tunnel that houses the collider, report officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.