THE (LHC), possibly science’s greatest ever project, was undone in September by one badly soldered join. With 10,000 such joins around the accelerator’s ring, it is proving a struggle to check them all in time to restart this autumn as hoped.
A splice between two sections of superconducting cable melted when the current was turned up. As well as repairing the one that failed, engineers have so far found and fixed 20 slightly under-par splices. It is a slow process as each of the LHC’s eight sectors must be gently warmed from its 1.9 kelvin…
