Only one day after a transformer used to cool the Large Hadron Collider had to be replaced by the CERN researchers after it broke down, halting the machine’s tests, another problem with the particle accelerator has occurred, delaying plans to smash protons into each other.

A quench caused 100 of the Collider’s magnets (of a total 1,600 superconducting magnets that the machine is fitted with) to heat up by almost 100 degrees Celsius, which prompted the engineers to turn off the LHC beam until the damage done has been estimated. In order to keep the magnets at the proper temperature of minus 271.3 degrees Celsius, 96 tonnes of liquid helium were used by the scientists, of which almost one tonne leaked into the LHC’s tunnel.

The magnet failure was reported in sector 3-4 of the accelerator and it gave rise to the loss of the vacuum conditions needed for the head-on collision of the proton beams. Consequently, the experiment has been postponed for an undetermined period of time. The first trial collision had been previously scheduled for the following week, but researchers believe that given the circumstances, the test would be impossible to conduct as planned.

The Large Hadron Collider is the highest-energy particle accelerator complex, aimed at recreating the after-effects of the „Big Bang,” which is a theory about the origins of the Universe stating that the latter expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition, after a coin-sized object exploded 15 billion years ago.