The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva may be shut down for at least two months after a serious malfunction, the European Organisation for Nuclear Reserach (CERN) says.
Engineers were forced to switch off the world's most powerful particle accelerator after a magnet failure, which led to tonnes of liquid helium leaking into the Collider's 27-km tunnel. Earlier this month international scientists celebrated the successful start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine located in a deeply-buried tunnel on the Swiss-French border. The biggest and most complex machine ever made, the LHC aims to unlock the physical secrets of the universe by simulating the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.
Helen Long reports.SOUNDBITE: James Gillies, Cern's Head of Communications.
