Europe's energy crisis has gotten so bad that the Large Hadron collider may be offline.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its French acronym, is currently drafting plans to shut down its particle accelerators due to high energy demands. The organization is trying to figure out how it would be possible to keep the collider running.
Serge Claudet, chair of the energy panel, told the WSJ that grid stability was their main concern.
The news comes after Russia's Gazprom energy service said it would be indefinitely cutting off the natural gas supply via the main route for Russian to export natural gas to Europe.
Analysts say it's almost certainly intended as an economic punishment against the European Union for supporting Ukraine in its efforts to fend off the Russian invasion of that country.
The emergency plan drafted by CERN is not the only one. With the Ukrainian conflict showing no signs of abating, companies and countries are preparing for the possibility of gas rationing.
The Swiss scientific facility, which at peak operation uses a third as much energy as the nearby city of Geneva, is trying to prevent a full-scale shutdown of the LHC. It's in talks with its French energy provider to get a warning if it starts to use more electricity.
The energy chair said it was a voluntary action. You don't want to break it.
Europe's energy crunch is squeezing the world's largest particle collider.
Physicists don't want to build another large hadron.
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