The massive particle accelerator of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has been halted for two months, a spokesperson for CERN announced on Saturday. “An incident occurred during testing. A part of the machine will need to be repaired,” said spokesperson James Gillies.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest physical machine in the world, was first halted a few days after its launch on September 10 due to an electrical problem in the cooling system of the 27-kilometer-long tunnel located 100 meters underground.
It had been started on Friday, and is now halted again. The project is valued at 3.76 billion euros. It was conceived in 1983, and construction began in 1996. Thousands of physicists and engineers from around the world are working on it, aiming to uncover the secrets of the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. (Hina)
