The Large Hadron Collider is experiencing some technical difficulties right now. Is there a chance that the LHC couldve been sabotaged?
Yes, it’s possible that the LHC was sabotaged – its predecessor the LEP was sabotaged – someone deliberately left two beer bottles inside the beam tube during construction. It took ages to work out why the beam could only make it round about 12 times. However, I don’t think it is likely in this case. The fault is quite a common fault on other particle accelerators. The LHC anticipated this, and had built-in safeguards, which all worked as designed, but unexpectedly for some reason weren’t enough to stop the machine being damaged and liquid helium excaped. What would normally only take less than a week to fix on another accelerator, takes months on the LHC as it runs at a temperature colder than space, and has to be warmed up to the point where people can safely go in. The escaping liquid helium itself probably did quite a lot of damage too.
