Those of you who have been waiting to find out what particles helped contribute to the beginning of the universe will have to wait. The Large Hadron Collider seems to have hit a small glitch – what appears to be a faulty electrical circuit has led to a leak of helium into the main tunnel of the LHC, which is supposed to be a vacuum.
Unfortunately, repairing this for the LHC will be much harder then for most other particle accelerators, because of the fact that the LHC works at near absolute zero, the temperature at which atoms completely stop moving within an object. In order to be able to fix the problem, CERN, the group behind the particle accelerator, will first have to warm up the LHC before they can make repairs, a process which should take several weeks. Once they do fix it, they will then have to cool it down again. Officials at CERN believe that the soonest that it will be operational is in two months.
On the plus side, however, this gives all those doomsayers two more months to live life to the fullest before they go into their basements with all of their emergency “End of the World” supplies.
Via CNN.com
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