CERN powers up powerful magnet

GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, says the world's largest superconducting magnet has reached operational power for the first time.

Called the Barrel Toroid because of its shape, the magnet will provide a powerful magnetic field for ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors under construction at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007.

The magnet consists of eight superconducting coils, each in the shape of a round-cornered rectangle, 16 feet wide, 82 feet long and weighing 110 tons and aligned to millimeter precision. It will work with other magnets in ATLAS to bend the paths of charged particles produced in collisions at the LHC, enabling properties to be measured.

At 151 feet long, 82 feet wide and 82 feet high, ATLAS is the largest volume detector ever constructed for particle physics.