CERN rivals not surprised by melting magnets

GENEVA -- The daring success of the world's largest atom smasher on its opening day was more surprising to many scientists than the troubles it subsequently developed.

A problem with a magnet connection will delay the start of experiments for half a year, partly because the $3.8 billion accelerator is so complicated to repair. Physicists — some of whom waited two decades to use the new equipment — will now have to wait three more weeks for the damaged section to be warmed up to room temperature.

They can then get inside to see what went wrong.

Yet such glitches are not uncommon. Michael Harrison, who worked on Fermilab's Tevatron collider and designed and built the United States' other superconducting collider at Brookhaven on Long Island, said both machines had similar start-up problems.

"You find all kinds of little issues as you start to turn it on and make it work," Harrison said in a telephone interview from Brookhaven.

Rival operations in the United States watched with admiration as CERN flawlessly launched its new Large Hadron Collider before the world's news media, the first time such a start-up has been public anywhere.

"A huge cheer went up from here," said Judy Jackson, spokeswoman for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, whose Tevatron is losing its title of world's highest-energy collider with the start-up of CERN's.

Scientists watching the Sept. 10 event live at Fermilab "were all holding our breath," Jackson said. "People here had been through this and said, 'Oh man, I hope it works.'"

The meltdown of a connection between superconducting magnets nine days later at CERN was more expected. But it knocked out use of the machine for two months, costing the scientists valuable time to get the machine ready for use on experiments next spring after the usual four-month winter shutdown.

"It's what happens when you start up a big, superconducting machine," Jackson told The Associated Press. "Our impression is that what happened last Friday at CERN caught them more by surprise than it did us."