Turns out that fixing the slight liquid helium leak down below Geneva earlier this year is going to cost rather more than the vase you knocked over at Auntie Flo’s house when you were 13, which cost you all your pocket money for the following three months. To be precise, the exact cost of fixing the LHC is £14 million.

The team behind it also say that “realistically”, it’s going to take until next summer before things are up and running again. Originally, we thought that it’d be going again around now, but the damage was more severe than the team realised. Most concerningly of all, the cost of fixing the thing ‘falls within CERN’s budget’. Damn – that’s one hell of a budget.

LHC (via BBC)

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