Friday, July 26, 2013
After tedious trip, giant magnet reaches Ill. lab
CHICAGO (AP) — It’s 50 feet wide, weighs more than 15 tons and took a month to transport 3,200 miles from New York to Illinois.
A gigantic electromagnet ended its tedious journey early today at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, near Chicago, where it will be used to study blazing-fast particles.
But getting the massive gadget to the lab wasn’t so fast.
From a federal laboratory in New York, it floated down the East Coast into the Gulf, then up river to Illinois, but couldn’t twist more than an eighth of an inch without being permanently damaged.
The trip involved outrunning tropical weather in the Gulf of Mexico, then road blocks as it traveled on a specially made flatbed truck at speeds of only between 5 and 15 mph.