BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Austria is contemplating withdrawing from CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory, in order to use its high cost share to fund fields where there is more impact for businesses and universities.

    Austria joined the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1959. CERN has created the biggest machine ever -- a particle collider under the French-Swiss border outside Geneva which aims to recreate the conditions of the "Big Bang," the origin of the universe.

    Austria has been a member of the 20-nation body since 1959, but plans to leave because membership ties up around 70 percent of its budget for funding such international research, Science Minister Johannes Hahn said late Thursday.

    Austria spends roughly 17 million euros per year, or 2% of the CERNs budget. It will be the first country to leave the organization since Spain's departure in 1969. Spain rejoined in 1983.

    Austrian physicists are stunned over the country's plan, just months before the restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

    "It is a black day for Austrian science," says Christian Fabjan, who heads the Institute for High Energy Physics at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

    CERN director-general, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, will travel to Vienna this week to meet Hahn and discuss the withdrawal.

    (Agencies)