Corey S. Powell: I've been thinking about an unusual kind of garbage problem. When the Large Hadron Collider shuts down, all those high-speed particles have to go somewhere. This is where: An 8-meter-long radioactive graphite trash can, called a beam dump. home.cern/news/news/ac... 🧪

I've been thinking about an unusual kind of garbage problem. When the Large Hadron Collider shuts down, all those high-speed particles have to go somewhere. This is where: An 8-meter-long radioactive graphite trash can, called a beam dump. home.cern/news/news/ac... 🧪

Anatomy of a beam dump. A handy way to get rid of 350 megajoules of high-energy protons when you need to shut down your particle collider. Weighs just 6 tons! home.cern/news/news/ac... 🧪

I always thought it's nifty how they scan the beam across the beam dump to spread out the energy

Is it true that's how Cern can barbeque an entire cow for their annual picnic in less than 3.62 seconds?

No thanks on the radioactive beef, though. 😂

Interesting reading. We were urged, at some point, to call such things "beam absorbers," because "dump" might connote, as you say, garbage. It was undesirable to give the impression our lab was dumping something. This did not keep us from thinking of a beam dump as a beam dump.

This CERN post from last month talks about the changes they made to the beam dumps for anyone interested. home.cern/news/news/ac...

New beam dumps: cut along the dotted linehome.cern When particle beams circulating in the LHC need to be stopped, they are directed towards the beam dumps. In 2020, during Long Shutdown 2, the main LHC beam dumps, which had been in place in the accele...

I remember reading about the beam dumps during initial construction of the LHC. It was very interesting to read how they held up, the autopsy and how they were eventually reengineered. Thanks. :)

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