The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been called the most ambitious scientific experiment in history. But if the repair bill from a helium leak that arose soon after the $10 billion LHC went online in September keeps growing, people might start coming up with other, far less complimentary descriptions of the project.
The leak was originally triggered by an electrical malfunction between two of the powerful magnets that power the LHC. At the time, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its French acronym CERN, said it planned to have the LHC back up and running by March.
However, this week CERN spokesman James Gillies told the Associated Press that the LHC repairs won't be completed until May or early June, and will cost about $21 million.
To fix the helium leak, researchers must bring the LHC from its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, or minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit, up to room temperature, a process that takes between 3 to 4 weeks.
"If we can do it sooner, all well and good. But I think we can do it realistically (in) early summer," Gillies told the AP.
The LHC, a 17-mile-long ring-shaped tunnel situated underground on the France-Switzerland border, is designed to crash particles together with such force that it'll hopefully provide them with a glimpse into the origins of matter and shed light on some of the unanswered questions of physics.
The idea behind the LHC is to simulate the conditions that existed one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the theoretical explosion that scientists believe led to the formation of the universe and to its continual outward expansion.
Scientists believe the Big Bang took place sometime in the neighborhood of 15 billion years ago.
