Bad connection likely cause of particle collider shutdown

A badly soldered electrical connection was likely responsible for the malfunction that put the world's largest particle collider out of action until next year, a senior scientist said Monday.

While it was likely just one poor soldering job out of the Large Hadron Collider's 10,000 connections, "it cost dearly", said Lyn Evans, project leader of the experiment. The particle collider is housed in a 27-kilometre-long tunnel at the European Nuclear Research Organisation (CERN), located near Geneva, Switzerland.