Re:CERN to measure Higgs boson this August
They had some problems with the LHC earlier this month; the supports for the primary accelerator had a structural failure. Essentially when the magnets in the accelerator were powered up for a test, they created a massive amount of force which the supports couldn’t take. According to engineering documents published for the unit; the Fermi lab (their biggest rival in the search for the Higgs particle; from where CERN bought the equipment) engineers who designed the unit didn’t take into account, or foresee as a problem the asymmetric loading that occurred. They should have it fixed by June.
Various Clickies:
[url=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=bursting-magnets-may-dela]SciAm article on the Incident[/url]
[url=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=B93B465E-E7F2-99DF-3C70A591C8AE7E1E&sc=I100322]SciAm article on the causes[/url]
[url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/03/magnets_give_way/]And the El Reg article on it[/url]