World's biggest particle smasher springs a leak

Sat, 09/20/2008 - 03:38 - NLN

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. Researchers do not yet know the extent of the damage, but some of the machine's parts probably will have to be replaced, a process that could take weeks.

Read full story at Science.