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Large Hadron Collider: the circle is complete!
:: 19 November, 2007
The last interconnection arc sector 1-2 was conducted Wednesday, Nov. 7, marking the end of the massive project to connect the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).
In the depths of the LHC tunnel, Robert Aymar, director general of CERN, a bolt screwed a special gold-plated, the last sector 1-2, to mark the completion of the interconnection of all the LHC arcs.
A crucial stage of the project was completed, showing how starting the machine is imminent.
The last year on the same date, only one sector (the sector 7-8) had been completed.
Today, all eight are ready.
The last year on the same date, only one sector (the sector 7-8) had been completed. A total of about 1700 magnets were interconnected, which has demanded about 65000 electrical connections superconducting cables and 40000 welds watertight (representing 10 km!), Practiced by tungsten welding in an inert gas to protect the bath merger of oxidation. Quality requirements are high: the discovery of a leak in the cryogenic system or a failure in a power line after cooling sector require heat for the repair, a long and costly process.
It now remains to complete the fittings recent special sections, in which the beam is injected, or extract guided up an experiment sector 4-5 is being cooled to 1.9 K and the other four sectors are expected to begin the cooling by the end of the year. Once testing electrical and vacuum conducted, the area 1-2 will be one of them. The bolt gold is no longer just one of hundreds of thousands of interconnections essential to the operation of the LHC.
About Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland (46°14′N, 6°03′E). Currently under construction, the LHC is scheduled to begin operation in May 2008. The LHC is expected to become the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator. The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries, universities and laboratories.
When activated, it is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson — often dubbed the God Particle — the observation of which could confirm the predictions and 'missing links' in the Standard Model of physics, and explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory which seeks to unify three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why the remaining force, gravitation, is so weak compared to the other three forces.
Release link: http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html
Tags: interconnection , sector 1-2 , massive project , LHC , Robert Aymar , CERN. ,
