Delay for the LHC

As of my last post on the LHC, following the quench incident on Sept. 19, little was known about the cause of the incident nor the extent of the damage. In fact, so much liquid helium was released into the tunnel in the affected sector of the machine that it was too cold for people to enter until last week. A colleague of mine quoted the team who entered the sector as saying that when they got to the magnets that were affected, "it wasn't a pretty sight". CERN has released a report today giving an initial summary of what happened and the extent of the damage, and indeed it turns out to have been quite serious: 24 of the long dipole magnets and 5 of the quadrupole magnets (which focus the beam) suffered serious mechanical damage when the liquid helium enclosure between two of the magnets ruptured, allowing helium ...