Science News

CERN Big Bang machine hoping for first high energy collisions

Mar 30, 2010, 11:13 GMT

Scientists look at their screens in the CMS experience control room at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, 30 March 2010. EPA/SALVATORE DI NOLFI

Geneva - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), also known as the Big Bang machine, was being ramped up Tuesday morning for its first collision at the highest energy levels ever recreated.

With everything in place, scientists were hoping it was just a matter of time before the historic collision - expected to simulate the moment just after the Big Bang - takes place, with optimists expecting the moment to occur within hours or days.

Early hiccups, however, including proton beams falling offline, indicated that reaching optimal results on the first run were somewhat unlikely, as top scientists had warned.

'Beams lost again ... operators will need to study the situation now,' was the latest item on the Twitter feed from the experiment.

A delay of at least several hours was expected.

An earlier attempt at the same project in 2008 resulted in several technical problems, which knocked the machine out of commission. After 14 months of repairs, and several runs at lower energy levels, the time is ripe again to attempt the main experiment.

The LHC - located 100 metres below the earth's surface at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, at the border between Switzerland and France - is set to generate the fastest ever collisions of particles, resulting in the release of 7 teraelectronvolts - a massive measure of energy.

Once hitting that energy level, CERN plans to run the machine continuously for a period of 18-24 months, with a short technical stop at the end of 2010.

The aim is to see if certain particles can be recreated, in an effort to understand the universe in the moment after the Big Bang - believed to be the explosive event which started the universe - in part by explaining how elementary particles acquire mass.

CERN's Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/cern/ Live Webcast: http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics/