Spared Until June, The LHC Won't Be Back Online Until Summer

Good news out of CERN's Large Hadron Collider's press department: we're safe until at least June of 2009.

From the press release:

'The top priority for CERN today is to provide collision data for the experiments as soon as reasonably possible,' said CERN Director General Robert Aymar. "This will be in the summer of 2009.'
The initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.
'We have a lot of work to do over the coming months,' said LHC project Leader Lyn Evans, 'but we now have the roadmap, the time and the competence necessary to be ready for physics by summer. We are currently in a scheduled annual shutdown until May, so we're hopeful that not too much time will be lost.'

Question: this thing cost billions of dollars and they take annual shutdowns for 6 months? That sort of seems like a waste of money... At least we have another 7 months before those mini black holes suck the earth into oblivion.

[UPDATE 1:28pm: An EIGN reader pointed out that today is Wednesday and that this is good news. So this is your weekly GNW (Good News Wednesday) story. hope you enjoyed it.]

[image via boston.com]