Long delay to fix collider

THE world’s largest atom smasher — which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month — has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said on Saturday.

Experts have gone into the 27km circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border to examine the damage that halted operations about 36 hours after its September 10 start-up, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

“It’s too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out,” said Gillies.