It is exciting to watch the LHC operations team slowly switch the machine back on step by step, encountering problems, solving them, encountering new ones and still breaking records while getting the machine running again. It is also educational. When the linear collider goes into operation it won’t be at the push of one button […]
Quench
Everything has a limit—superconducting cavities are no exception. Physicists put voltage in their superconducting cavities to boost the energy of particles. But it’s possible to ask for too much from a cavity. When this happens, the cavity fails: the superconducting material becomes normal conducting, the voltage collapses and the energy escapes. This is called a […]