
20-ton magnet heads to New York - dnetesn
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2015/20-ton-magnet-heads-to-new-york
======
pavel_lishin
> _“The technical difficulty in manufacturing such a magnet is staggering,”
> says Brookhaven Lab physicist David Morrison, co-spokesperson for PHENIX,
> one of RHIC’s two main experiments. “The technology may be similar to an
> MRI—also a superconducting solenoid with a hollow center—but many times
> larger and completely customized. These magnets look very simple from the
> outside, but the internal structure contains very sophisticated engineering.
> You can’t just order one of these beasts from a catalogue. ”_

Can someone go into more detail about this? What makes it so sophisticated? At
the end, it's just a pipe made out of ferrous metals, right? So is it just a
very evenly distributed alloy, or what?

Edit: Also, how do you transport something like that along the highway without
arriving with three smart cars and a geo metro stuck to the trailer?

~~~
Animats
_Also, how do you transport something like that along the highway without
arriving with three smart cars and a geo metro stuck to the trailer?_

It's not charged up, of course.

Moving heavy things that will fit on a standard truck is not difficult. Moving
things larger than that is. Some magnet about 20 feet across was moved last
year, and they had to close off a roads at night to get the thing to a barge
port.

~~~
masklinn
> Some magnet about 20 feet across was moved last year, and they had to close
> off a roads at night to get the thing to a barge port.

For fun stuff of that sort, there was moving OXCART (the future A12/SR-71)
from the Lockheed SkunkWorks assembly plant to Area 51 (a ~750 miles journey
with the package being wider than many road at the time) for testing:
[http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-...](http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html)

And the A380 parts moving through a small french village to reach the assembly
plant: [http://www.cnet.com/news/the-giant-airbus-a380-and-the-
tiny-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/the-giant-airbus-a380-and-the-tiny-french-
village/) Because it's a pan-european project the A380 route is pretty
extensive and varied, on the final part of the water journey they actually
have to play with the tides as some barge sections need high tide to go
through, but bridges require low tide to get under.

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lotsofmangos
I love the illustration -
[http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/sites/default/files/images/s...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/sites/default/files/images/standard/SolenoidMagnet_Scale_Illustration.jpg)

It looks like part of a discarded plan by some deranged megalomaniac.

~~~
duskwuff
The BaBar project at SLAC was named after the particles it was studying: B
(the B meson) and B-bar (its antiparticle). The elephant was an old joke: the
mascot of the project was Babar the Elephant, a character from an old French
children's book:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant)

I imagine that the use of an elephant in this illustration (and in the
introduction to the article!) is a reference to the old project mascot. :)

~~~
lotsofmangos
I just imagined someone intent on world domination waking up in their secret
cave after a heavy night drinking, looking at this and trying desperately to
remember what they were planning to do after magnetizing the elephant.

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mdturnerphys
Here's a writeup about the move of another superconducting magnet, from
Livermore to Seattle: [http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~tanner/PDFS/Thomas12jpack-
move.pdf](http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~tanner/PDFS/Thomas12jpack-move.pdf)

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carlob
After all the bashing of the Italian startup visa

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890952)

After the Rome drug map

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909143)

Finally something proudly made in Italy!

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3JPLW
Why don't they list the field strength?

~~~
Someone
1.5 Tesla, according to
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BaBar_experiment](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BaBar_experiment)
(I don't think this kind of magnet can, in practice, be upgraded, but
corrections are welcome)

~~~
ars
1.5 Tesla doesn't seem like a lot - MRI's have more.

What makes this one special? The size?

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codewritinfool
It is stuck in St. Louis, they can't get it past the gateway arch.

Just a joke, people, carry on.

