Smooth start for Big Bang experiment

Switch-on as scientist fears ‘end of world’

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SCIENTISTS celebrated today as the “Big Bang experiment” was launched.

The massive experiment is an attempt to recreate the start of the universe using the biggest and most complex machine yet built.

The £5 billion Large Hadron Collider was powered up to “full beam” without a hitch at CERN, the European nuclear research organisation in Geneva.

LHC project leader Dr Lyndon Evans, from Aberdare in south Wales said: “This is really the biggest and most complex scientific project ever undertaken.”

Concerns have been raised that the experiment could bring about the “end of the world”.

German chemist Professor Otto Rossler, fears that black holes created by the LHC will grow uncontrollably and “eat the planet from the inside”.

But those involved in the project insist they have reviewed all the evidence and concluded that it poses no risk to the universe.

Particle physicist Dr James Gillies, a spokesman for the LHC, said: “There’s nothing to worry about, the LHC is absolutely safe.”

After a tense first hour today researchers announced they had achieved “full beam”.

This meant that a stream of sub-atomic particles was racing round the LHC’s 27 kilometre-long circular tunnel at just under the speed of light. The next stage will be to fire a beam in the opposite direction.

The LHC, which took two decades to construct, is the largest particle accelerator the world has seen.

Scientists expect to reproduce conditions that existed during the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang at the birth of the universe.

The LHC, in a 17 mile (27km) tunnel under 100m of rock, straddles the borders of Switzerland and France between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.