Toronto (OTL) - In a serious disappointment to many, the Large Hadron Collider has been forced to shut down until the year 2009.
CERN made the official announcement that they will not be able to power up again until the spring of 2009.
The LHC is the world’s largest particle collider, and is located in a 17-mile tunnel along the French-Swiss border.
The experts in Geneva were trying to test the Big Bang idea by using the LHC to smash two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, to see what happened.
It is approximately 330 feet underground, and is considered the biggest science experiment in world history.
A helium leak forced the LHC to shut down just a few days ago.
The most likely cause of the leak was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s giant magnets, CERN says.Originally, it was believed that it was only going to be shut down for a few months. This is not the case though, as CERN stated that the restart date is now set for spring 2009.
The decision came due to the fact that CERN was going to have to go through their winter maintenance period anyways.