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Boy, is this frustrating:

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections. Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.

We should never have abandoned our version of this machine back in 1993:

The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), planned to be built mostly in Waxahachie, Texas, would have been the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex. During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the project. In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 billion. A recurring argument was the contrast with NASA's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), which was of a similar amount.[citation needed] Critics of the project argued that the US could not afford both of them.

So - we got the Space Station and the Europeans got the Super-Collider and they went and done totally messed it up. Let's hope they fix their mess soon...like yesterday!

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