The world's largest atom smasher, which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month, is more badly damaged than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday. Experts have gone into the 17-mile circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border to examine the damage that halted operations about 36 hours after its September 10 startup, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out," Gillies said.

Gillies said the sector that was damaged will have to be warmed well above the absolute zero temperature used for operations so repairs can be made, a time-consuming process. "A number of magnets raised their temperature by around 100 degrees," Gillies said. "We have now to warm up the whole sector in a controlled manner before we can actually go in and repair it."

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