Big Bang machine to restart ‘in a couple of weeks’

This March 22, 2007 photo shows the magnet core of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid), one of the experiments preparing to take data at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is expected to throw light on the Big Bang Theory and the birth of the universe, will restart within the next fortnight, its architect and project leader Lyndon Evans said here on Friday.

LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, was shutdown on September 19, 2008 owing to a technical fault.

“The machine will start up in the next couple of weeks. The first collider beams would be injected around the end of this year. Scientific experiments can start in early 2010,” Mr. Evans said after delivering a lecture here.

On September 19, 2008 a fault in an electrical connection between two magnets in the LHC led to mechanical damage and release of liquid Helium which contributed to the further damage of the affected sub-sector of the machine. This caused the LHC to shut down temporarily.

Scientists were doing their best to ensure that similar problems with the LHC did not occur in future, Mr. Evans said. Describing the LHC as dealing with the fundamental issues of physics, he said besides throwing light on the Big Bang and the birth of the universe, it will also result in Grid Computing, the next generation global network after the World Wide Web, which was also introduced by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research’s (CERN).