The helium leak which caused the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to shut down last Friday will mean that the LHC will be in hibernation until Spring 2009. While the repairs will take approximately two months, as I indicated earlier, the lab shuts down in the winter to save costs. Officials with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) decided not to restart the world's largest particle accelerator until next year.

Speaking at the 142nd session of the CERN1 Council today, the Organization's Director General Robert Aymar announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will start up in May 2008, taking the first steps towards studying physics at a new high-energy frontier.