Submission + - CERN's LHC Suffers Massive Magnet Quench
deglr6328 writes: "The Large Hadron Collider suffered a "massive" superconducting magnet quench in sector 34 at 11:27 local time today. Reports indicate over 1 ton of superfluid liquid helium was vaporized and vented into the beam tunnel. Vacuum in the beam pipe was lost. Superconducting magnet quenches occur when part of the electromagnet, for whatever reason (heat or locally high magnetic field), goes normally conducting and dissipates the huge amount of energy stored in its magnetic field into ohmic heating at the location of the quench. This can sometimes result in permanent magnet damage, though only time will tell if the LHC's magnets remain functional. Temperatures are now being brought down again but ~0.5 TeV collisions scheduled for next week will certainly be postponed. A small NMR machine magnet quench can be seen here."