Big Bang collider

Big Bang collider repairs to cost up to $29 million


European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said: repairing the giant particle collider built to simulate the Big Bang" could cost up to 35 million Swiss francs ($29 million).

The collider, the largest & most complex machine ever made, has already cost 10 billion Swiss francs to build, supported by CERN's 20 European member states and other nations including the US & Russia. The collider was designed to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, believed by most cosmologists to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago.It sends beams of sub-atomic particles to smash into each other at nearly the speed of light. Physicists plan to look at the results of those explosions for new or previously unseen particles that could unlock more secrets of science. Scientists started it up with great fanfare in September, firing beams of proton particles around its 27-km (17-mile) underground tunnel. But nine days later they were forced to shut it down when an electrical fault caused a helium leak. Repairing it will require 53 of the 57 magnets in the collider's tunnel, buried under the Swiss-French border near Geneva, to be removed and then re-installed.

Some 28 have already come out, and all the magnets should be back in place by the end of March, Gillies said. CERN now expects the machine to be powered up again for tests by June, after which particle beams can be sent around again.