The electrical failure that forced the shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in September and will keep the system offline over the winter will cost at least $21 million to repair. The Large Hadron Collider, a $5.46 billion machine designed to recreate the earliest moments of the universe, suffered a cooling-system malfunction nine days after scientists started the machine in September. In other words the LHC is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, intended to collide opposing beams of protons or lead ions, each moving at approximately 99.999999 per cent of the speed of light.

The collider will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research recently said that the repairs would be completed by May or early June. Spokesman James Gillies said the organization know as CERN is now estimating the restart will be at the end of June or later. The repair of a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that resulted in helium leaks will take much longer than expected and will cost at least $21 million, the organization said today.

The collider operates at temperatures colder than outer space for maximum efficiency and experts needed to gradually warm the damaged section to assess it. "Now the sector is warm so they are able to go in and physically look at each of the interconnections," Mr Gillies told Associated Press.

It was initially thought that the repair process would take until the spring. But it now appears more likely that it will be early summer before the LHC starts smashing atoms, to re-create conditions that last existed immediately after the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago.