Design Flaw Could Delay Collider

摘要

A magnet for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) failed during a key test at the European particle physics laboratory CERN last week. Physicists and engineers will have to repair the damaged magnet and retrofit others to correct the underlying design flaw, which could delay the start-up of the mammoth subterranean machine near Geneva, Switzerland, from November until the spring of 2008. That would eliminate a 1-month "engineering run" with which physicists had hoped to shake the bugs out of the machine before shutting down for the winter, when power becomes prohibitively expensive.