Scientists will conduct the world's greatest ever particle physics experiment, a historic "Big Bang" experiment, on Wednesday, hoping to revolutionize our understanding of the universe, according to media reports.
In the 6.4 billion euro (9.2 billion U.S. dollars) CERN (Geneva-based lab, known by its old French acronym CERN) experiment to be coducted inside an about 27-km tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border, scientists hope to detect evidence of extra dimensions, invisible "dark matter" and an elusive particle called the "Higgs boson."
"Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.
Scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang, which occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets -- and eventually to life on earth.
CERN scientists insist that while the collider is capable of creating black holes, they would be miniscule and incapable of growing.
"Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists."
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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