Bad Math Causes Huge Explosion at CERN Collider

Started by TehBorken, Apr 09 07 07:44

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TehBorken

Ooops.....

"The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN has suffered a big explosion deep inside that has caused a leak of hellium gas and the quick evacuation of everyone working there. The reason: [a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626728.ece"]a mathematical mistake that affected the design of the giant superconductive magnets[/a] made by Fermilab. Now the company will have to repair and upgrade the 24 magnets that are installed on the 27 km. circunference of one of the most important research centers on Earth."

This story might seem strangely familiar to you....because it happened before jst a few weeks ago. Double ooops.

"CERN is reporting that the giant magnets that steer the particle beam in the new and highly anticipated Large Hadron Collider have just [a href="http://user.web.cern.ch/user/QuickLinks/Announcements/2007/LHCInnerTriplet.html"]failed catastrophically in a stress test[/a], apparently due to a [a href="http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/20070329_page01.html"]design oversight[/a]. It doesn't help that the magnets were designed and built by CERN's US competitor Fermilab." While safety precautions were followed, and no one was injured nor were any rifts in the space-time continuum opened, it's still a rather large setback for the project.
 
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.