If you go to the CERN site: CERN
you'll find also a video with a lady speaking in Italian of her work at CERN.
I envied these guys working on a very Big Science project, also in a pleasant environment near to Geneva and Mont Blanc. Now they have a big problem but I am sure they will resolve it.
Tullio
The British National Space Centre (BNSC), Britain’s equivalent of NASA, notes in a new report (UK Civil Space Strategy: 2008-2012 and beyond) that “In 1986, the UK chose not to participate in human space missions.� This decision is still in place in 2008. There were no British manned space programs before 1986 either, so it could be stated that the British government has avoided human spaceflight for the entire duration of the half-century-old Space Age.
Not very inspiring to Science pupils....
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
I've had an exchange of informations in the LHC@home forum and the consensus is that failure was almost inevitable. Magnets long 3 m shrink about 20 cm when supercooled by liquid helium. The tube that carries the helium has an S-joint to adjust to the varied length, which is made by steel-reinforced rubber. Unfortunately rubber becomes brittle at low temperatures and breaks. Also different metal parts in the magnet have different shrinkage coefficients, leading to mechanical stresses, Luckily nobody was hurt but the future of LHC is bleak, to say the least. Maybe they gambled a little too much.
Tullio
I've had an exchange of informations in the LHC@home forum and the consensus is that failure was almost inevitable. Magnets long 3 m shrink about 20 cm when supercooled by liquid helium. The tube that carries the helium has an S-joint to adjust to the varied length, which is made by steel-reinforced rubber. Unfortunately rubber becomes brittle at low temperatures and breaks. Also different metal parts in the magnet have different shrinkage coefficients, leading to mechanical stresses, Luckily nobody was hurt but the future of LHC is bleak, to say the least. Maybe they gambled a little too much.
Tullio
20+ years after Challenger and we're talking brittle rubber and differential expansions?
Plus the massive magnetic fields generated by these superconducted currents wanting to expand the magnets ( & possibly abruptly ). So you now have a highly complex interaction of current, field and temperature - all of which is quite sensitive to geometry! I wonder if they've talked with the tokamak people .......
[aside]
Quote:
There was a difficult phase with nuclear reactor designs until it was realised that the key to safe control was passive design 'intent' - specifically changes in geometry with temperature rises caused a reliable expansion/separation of the fuel rods to thus reduce mutual solid angles and hence diminish neutron/nucleus collision rates. You'd still keep your active mechanisms like inserting absorbing rods as needed, but you would keep them above the fuel and simply drop down using gravity alone. A classic 'dead man' switch. ( This approach clearly demarcates Western designs from those of the old Eastern bloc ). Perhaps a similiar design impetus is needed for LHC.
[/aside]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
This confirms what I said. Good physicists are not necessarily good engineers and their projects often go beyond what is known through experience and trial and error procedures. Also the physicists' curriculum does not include much chemistry, material science and metallurgy. One thing is to study elementary particles or plasma and another to study matter in bulk. Nuclear engineers have learned also through costly and dangerous mistakes, like the attempt to free the Wigner energy of graphite which led to the Windscale accident in 1957 and the Chernobyl disaster.
Tullio
Good grief - even I learnt about Invar at school in the 1950's ......
When you start on a new road you never know what will happen. Think of the tragic mistake of designing the windows of the Comet jet airliner in a rectangular form, with stresses adding up at the four corners. It cost a heavy loss of human lives and the demise of the British aeronautical industry, which had developed the Whittle jet engine. But such things are not uncommon when you abandon a proven technology and start on a new one. I am afraid that the ITER fusion reactor to be built at Cadarache will incur in the same risk. It would perhaps be better to follow the ideas of professor Bruno Coppi of MIT and start with reactors of a smaller size, which he calls Ignitor.
Tullio
Ah, we need Richard Feynman alive again! A brilliant physicist who was never too proud to go and find the person who new the answer that he lacked. For instance, he began his foray into the Challenger disaster investigation by speaking to the range safety officer at the Cape. His writings indicate that he loved the idea that physical theories ( eg. quantum electrodynamics ) could be used to give hard predictions that could be rigorously tested by experiment. His lecture series is replete with examples very relevant to materials science, derivations ( with assumptions ) from basic quantum mechanics.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
There is one principle scientists never seem to grasp is to design maintainability into their instruments The more complex the instrument the more important the principle.. (Two months to change a part) reminds me of my auto dealer..:-)
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Interesting theory, and it
)
Interesting theory, and it would also explain some of the quality problems in contemporary software engineering :-) .
CU
Bikeman
If you go to the CERN
)
If you go to the CERN site:
CERN
you'll find also a video with a lady speaking in Italian of her work at CERN.
I envied these guys working on a very Big Science project, also in a pleasant environment near to Geneva and Mont Blanc. Now they have a big problem but I am sure they will resolve it.
Tullio
Suipposedly the British
)
Suipposedly the British equivalent of NASA is the BNSC. There are some teaching resources there.
http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/
Also this comment from the Space Review
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1084/1
Not very inspiring to Science pupils....
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
I've had an exchange of
)
I've had an exchange of informations in the LHC@home forum and the consensus is that failure was almost inevitable. Magnets long 3 m shrink about 20 cm when supercooled by liquid helium. The tube that carries the helium has an S-joint to adjust to the varied length, which is made by steel-reinforced rubber. Unfortunately rubber becomes brittle at low temperatures and breaks. Also different metal parts in the magnet have different shrinkage coefficients, leading to mechanical stresses, Luckily nobody was hurt but the future of LHC is bleak, to say the least. Maybe they gambled a little too much.
Tullio
RE: I've had an exchange of
)
20+ years after Challenger and we're talking brittle rubber and differential expansions?
Plus the massive magnetic fields generated by these superconducted currents wanting to expand the magnets ( & possibly abruptly ). So you now have a highly complex interaction of current, field and temperature - all of which is quite sensitive to geometry! I wonder if they've talked with the tokamak people .......
[aside]
[/aside]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
This confirms what I said.
)
This confirms what I said. Good physicists are not necessarily good engineers and their projects often go beyond what is known through experience and trial and error procedures. Also the physicists' curriculum does not include much chemistry, material science and metallurgy. One thing is to study elementary particles or plasma and another to study matter in bulk. Nuclear engineers have learned also through costly and dangerous mistakes, like the attempt to free the Wigner energy of graphite which led to the Windscale accident in 1957 and the Chernobyl disaster.
Tullio
Good grief - even I learnt
)
Good grief - even I learnt about Invar at school in the 1950's ......
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
RE: Good grief - even I
)
When you start on a new road you never know what will happen. Think of the tragic mistake of designing the windows of the Comet jet airliner in a rectangular form, with stresses adding up at the four corners. It cost a heavy loss of human lives and the demise of the British aeronautical industry, which had developed the Whittle jet engine. But such things are not uncommon when you abandon a proven technology and start on a new one. I am afraid that the ITER fusion reactor to be built at Cadarache will incur in the same risk. It would perhaps be better to follow the ideas of professor Bruno Coppi of MIT and start with reactors of a smaller size, which he calls Ignitor.
Tullio
Ah, we need Richard Feynman
)
Ah, we need Richard Feynman alive again! A brilliant physicist who was never too proud to go and find the person who new the answer that he lacked. For instance, he began his foray into the Challenger disaster investigation by speaking to the range safety officer at the Cape. His writings indicate that he loved the idea that physical theories ( eg. quantum electrodynamics ) could be used to give hard predictions that could be rigorously tested by experiment. His lecture series is replete with examples very relevant to materials science, derivations ( with assumptions ) from basic quantum mechanics.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
There is one principle
)
There is one principle scientists never seem to grasp is to design maintainability into their instruments The more complex the instrument the more important the principle.. (Two months to change a part) reminds me of my auto dealer..:-)
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold