Optimists and devotees of science must, along with pessimists dreading – or eagerly anticipating – the destruction of the universe, wait a bit longer.

The 'Big Bang' experiment involving the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been postponed to spring 2009.

According to a September 20 2008 statement on the LHC website, "during commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 3-4) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel".