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Mysterious Problems At the Large Hadron Collider?

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorAug 06, 2009
Siobhan O'Connor
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This is not the most comforting news coming out this week: The New York Times is reporting that there are problems over at the Large Hadron Collider. I'm not going to pretend I have a firm grasp on what the LHC is even supposed to do, but we can probably all agree that an enormous $9-billion subatomic particle collider is not the kind of thing we want to hear bad news about. Will it swallow the universe whole after all?Probably not; they haven't actually collided any particles yet. The problems are far more prosaic. "Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies," reports the Times. There have been other glitches, too. Some scientists are defecting; other say we should all be patient-it's not like they can whip up proof that other dimensions exist over night.You can read about recent goings on here, or our previous coverage of the LHC here.

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