[ExI] Hadron Collider postponement

[Damien Broderick]

CERN laboratory in Switzerland yesterday confirmed a delay in tests 
of its massive new particle accelerator.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometre-long circular tunnel 
100 m below the French-Swiss border, where subatomic particles will 
collide at close to the speed of light, will now start operations 
next spring, and not in November as originally planned, CERN said.

"The start-up at full level was always scheduled for spring 2008, but 
we had planned to test the machine for two weeks before Christmas, 
which will not now take place," said CERN's James Gillies, confirming 
a report in the French newspaper Le Monde. The delay is due to an 
accumulation of little setbacks, he said.

Magnets critical to the atom smasher failed in tests in April this year.