Large Hadron Collider Shuts Down!

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), after a launch that made us all heave a sigh of relief, is now offline, thanks to a failed magnet. The failure--called a quench--took down around 100 of the LHC's superconductor magnets, raising their temperatures by about 100 degrees C. Don't get startled by that number--the magnets are supposed to be kept at 1.9 degrees above absolute zero, so they were still at less than -70 degrees when this happened. So while there were no fires, about a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel, rendering it useless. For now. This isn't the first problem to beset the world's biggest atom smasher--just a few hours after the first test last week, one of the LHC's transformers went pfft, though the operator didn't report it till recently.
The scientists (and common sense) tell us not to be too worried the largest machine ever built by man is bound to have a few problems, and it would have been more surprising if everything was hunky dory. If you're worried about the consequences of October's impending particle collision, you can perhaps take some joy in this delay. For the rest of us, we'll just get on with our lives.