Austria Decides Against Pulling Out Of CERN
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said in a statement on Monday that he is overruling his science minister and the country will not be pulling out of the international particle physics laboratory, CERN, over rising costs, Reuters reported.
The particle collider, which is being called the biggest machine ever created, is built under the French-Swiss border outside Geneva.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) machine aims to recreate the conditions of the "Big Bang," or the origin of the universe.
Faymann, a social democrat, said at a news conference with Science Minister Johannes Hahn that Austria has been a member of CERN for over 50 years and a whole host of Austrian scientists are linked to CERN and will continue to be so in the future.
However, the conservative Hahn stated earlier this month that CERN’s $27 million annual membership ate up too much of his international research budget, and that Austria planned to quit the project.
The announcement caused outrage among Austria’s scientific community.
A headline in the popular daily Oesterreich, which pictured Faymann and Hahn plummeting spread-eagled through space read: "CERN clash: government in a black hole".
The relationship between the parties in Austria’s coalition government has been somewhat strained at times.
Boasting a price tag of around $9 billion so far, technical problems forced the particle collider to shut down in September after only nine days of operation.
Hahn said Austria contributes 2.2 percent of CERN’s budget, but that membership ties up around 70 percent of the country’s budget for other international research bodies.
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