Hadron goes Flacid. Paiste cries.

GENEVA, Sept. 20 (WashPost)-- The world's largest atom smasher -- which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month -- has been damaged twice and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, said Saturday that a large amount of helium had leaked into the 17-mile circular tunnel deep under the Swiss-French border that houses the Large Hadron Collider.

The massive collider began operating Sept. 10 to the delight of physicists around the world, flinging protons around the circle at nearly the speed of light. But it had to be shut down only 36 hours later because an electrical transformer failed.

That was repaired, but a CERN statement said a second failure took place midday Friday in the last section of the tunnel to undergo testing at high current, causing the large helium leak.

Spokesman James Gillies said the latest incident was several miles from the earlier damage. It is considered much more time-consuming to repair than the first malfunction.

The $10 billion particle accelerator has been in the design and construction stages for more than two decades. When operating, it fires beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms through the tunnel at near light speed.

It then causes the protons to collide, revealing how the tiniest particles were first created after the Big Bang, which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything else.