France arrests physicist working on the controversial "Big Bang" experiment
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 16:35 From the BNO Newsroom.
GENEVA (BNO NEWS) – A person working on the Large Hadron Collider beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland has been arrested on suspicion of links to terrorist organizations, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on Friday.
The suspect was arrested in Vienne, France on Thursday, according to CERN, who said he was arrested on suspicion of having links to terrorist organizations. The suspect is a physicist who was working on analysis projects with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN since 2003.
"He was not a CERN employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism: CERN is a particle physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe," a statement from the organization said.
CERN is currently preparing the Large Hadron Collider for a restart later in 2009 after it was forced to shut down last year due to technical problems. It is also known as the Big Bang Experiment as it seeks to simulate the Big Bang. Some people fear that such an experiment could potentially destroy Earth, but scientists have assured the project is safe.
"None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain. CERN is providing the support requested by the French police in this enquiry," the organization concluded.
Further details were not immediately available.
