After an electrical fault last Friday caused a serious ‘quench’ of one of the electrical links between the superconducting dipole magnets which steer protons in the massive LHC particle accelerator, which in turn lead to a helium leak in the magnets’ cooling system in that section of the tunnel, the huge machine was shut down. Now scientists are saying they won’t be able to repair it in time to run collisions before the LHC complex goes offline for the winter to reduce costs. The Large Hadron Collider will be put back up again in April.

In order for the dipole electromagnets which generate the magnetic field which bends the proton beams around the LHC’s circular tract to be powerful enough, they must be superconductive. Superconductivity is a property of certain materials to have no electrical resistance at very low temperatures. A material in this state will be very conducive to energy, and will make for a very powerful electromagnet.

In order to make it so, the CERN team has built the world’s largest cryogenic plant around the LHC, which cools the 30-ton magnets down to minus 271°C, which is very close to absolute zero, and colder than the temperature of open space. To perform repairs on the magnets, they must be warmed up to room temperature, fixed, and then cooled down once more. This all-in-all takes about two months. The repairs themselves, without this hindrance, would take no more than a few days.

This, unfortunately, leaves not much time for any more experiments, due to the winter maintenance period. The particle accelerator and accelerometer complex was designed to find evidence of particles that have not existed since the very inception of the universe. One particle specifically that the project is looking to prove the existence of is the Higgs Boson, a currently-theoretical particle proposed by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, which is part of the current standard model of particle physics, and which is that which accounts for an atom’s mass. However scientists working at CERN, as well as Dr. Higgs, will be forced to wait till the spring of next year to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

CERN scientists were none-too-happy about this development, but remained optimistic nonetheless. "Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, however adding that he has “no doubt that we will overcome this setback with the same degree or rigor and application."

Peter Limon, who designed part of the U.S. based Tevatron particle accelerator, remarked that such setbacks are unavoidable given the scope of the project involved, saying in a press statement that "Events occur from time to time that temporarily stop operations, for shorter or longer periods, especially during the early phases” of such a project.