Word: cern
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...Since then, Harvard’s team of professors, along with a handful of graduate students and post-docs, have made the 10- to 12-hour trip between Cambridge and the collider’s home at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), situated near the French-Swiss border...
...CERN spokesman James Gillies called the fault a "teething problem" and said that previous accelerators that used superconductivity - i.e., low temperatures that allow metals to conduct electricity without resistance - also faced early problems before "running pretty smoothly after they were sorted out." Even so, "it's certainly a disappointment," he added...
...which cosmologists and theoretical physicists can extrapolate. But they have less exalted reasons to hope for the LHC's success: After a glut of funding for particle physics in the '80s promised the building of several particle accelerators of equivalent power to the LHC, recent funding cuts mean the CERN experiment is now the only game in town. If it fails to provide results, physicists worry they will have to struggle to justify new, even more powerful machines, not to mention the salaries of thousands of scientists needed to build and operate them. Already, the LHC has been delayed several...
Gillies says that Friday's breakdown released a "large amount" of helium into the tunnel but that CERN's safety protocols ensured there was no risk to staff. Scientists are not allowed into the tunnel when the machine is running, he says, and first responders after the fault all wore respiratory equipment. All scientists working in the underground ring also carry portable respirators, which they are instructed to use within seconds of a helium leak...
...CERN's clerisy of PhDs and Nobel Prize-winners tire pretty quickly of the public's near-erotic obsession with the destructive power of a machine they consider a harmless tool. But, there's no underestimating the thrill of the risk. Earlier this year, when I visited CERN, my tour group included a father and his slouching, intensely apathetic teenage son. It wasn't until the tour guide mentioned that a helium leak could fell a man on the spot that the youngster's eyes lit up, practically dancing with visions of white-coated scientists crumpling to the floor like...