The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), - Design Flaws

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva, is the world's largest collider, which measures more than 16 miles in circumference. It is expected to usher in a new era of particle physics research, enabling scientists to replicate conditions immediately after the Big Bang.

With a budget of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010), the LHC is the most expensive scientific experiment in human history.

However, it would appear that simple silver soldering design flaws have shelved the collider's full power capabilties until at least 2013. One such connection failed recently and blew a hole in the collider wall, shutting down operations. A detailed analysis last summer revealed several more bad connections, and CERN now says that it will take a year to correct the problem throughout the machine. As a result, the LHC will not run at its full collision energy of 14 tera-electronvolts (1012 eV) until around 2013.

Design flaws article: Naturenews.com

Richard Wottrich