A Glitch in the Supercollider Plan

Not too many months ago, Alaska was hip-deep in the competition for the biggest and most expensive scientific instrument ever: the superconducting supercollider, the definitive atom-smashing machine. The home team put up a good fight for this multi-billion dollar research tool, but we were eliminated early in the competition. Once Texas was declared the winner, most Alaskans were willing to forget the whole thing.

Some local scientists were still interested, and one passed along an item from the New York Times News Service that indicated all is not so rosy with this huge project.

Essentially, the supercollider consists of two 53-mile-long rings stacked atop one another. Beams of protons (subatomic particles with a positive charge) will be shot around the rings in opposite directions. As they travel around the rings, the protons will be contained and accelerated to nearly the speed of light by 9,400 gigantic magnets. When the racing protons collide, the smashed-up remnants are expected to provide invaluable clues to the fundamental building blocks and forces of the universe.

That's been true for the atom-smashers built so far--they have advanced knowledge greatly. With 20 times the energy of any existing particle accelerator, this new giant has stirred hopes in the physics community worldwide. But its probable success depends completely on all those magnets, and they must work perfectly. So far, they don't.

The magnets are made of superconducting materials, which can carry electricity with no resistance and thus achieve great strength. These superconductors are not the kind making recent headlines that operate at far warmer temperatures than the old-fashioned kind, and are decades away from leaving the laboratory. The supercollider's magnets must be cooled to near absolute zero--that's zero degrees Kelvin, or minus 459.69 degrees Fahrenheit.

Clearly, what the supercollider's builders must deal with are no simple bar magnets. Each 55-foot-long superconducting magnet is composed of many pieces: inner and outer coils, collars, tubes to carry the liquid helium coolant, layers of insulation, various fasteners to keep everything together.

It's the necessary parts and pieces that cause the problems. The magnetic fields generated are so intense they cause tiny movements of coils and other components of the device. The movement generates heat; enough heat, and superconductivity is lost--sometimes violently.

The initial schedule for the superconducting supercollider called for three working prototype magnets to be ready by May 1986. By December 1988, only two of the eight prototypes built so far actually worked. One of the eight samples failed catastrophically as massive short circuits caused some of its components to melt.

Noting this sad record, some scientists as well as officials in the Congressional Budget Office have suggested supercollider construction be delayed. Even though construction is expected to take eight years, some experts doubt that problems with the mighty magnets can be solved before they are scheduled for installation.

People on the supercollider design team are more upbeat. They talk of the growing pains of a new technology, one pushing the limits of the known. But they aren't taking success for granted, and engineers struggling with the magnets' failings are putting in long hours seeking ways to cut out the fatal wiggles and shifts within the devices.

It's going to be an interesting race against time. Perhaps we Alaskans can take some wry comfort from knowing that for us, the race is a purely spectator sport.