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| 21:32, September 10, 2008 |
Scientists start experiment to recreate Big Bang
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A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy, near Geneva March 22, 2007. International physicists at a vast underground complex near Geneva launched a 20-year project on Wednesday to re-enact the "Big Bang" to try to explain the origins of the universe and how it came to harbor life.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on Wednesday started an experiment to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, which is believed to give birth to the universe.
The first proton beam has been successfully fired into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is housed in a 27-kilometer underground tunnel which runs between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range.
"It's a fantastic moment, said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. "We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe."
The LHC will eventually seek to collide two beams of particles at close to the speed of light, so that conditions just after the Big Bang, which happened some 13.7 billion years ago, could be to a large extent recreated.
Scientists at CERN, the world's leading laboratory for particle physics, are expected to use the experiment to unlock some of the secrets of the universe, including the make-up of "dark matter" --the invisible mass of energy that is believed to form 96 percent of the universe.
They also hope to find evidence of extra dimensions and an elusive particle called the "Higgs boson."
Wednesday's work is to inject the proton beam into the LHC and to have it circulate at close to the speed of light around the tightly-sealed collider, some 100 meters underground.
Now that the first beam circulation has been successful, scientists plan to inject a second beam into the LHC and to make it circulate in the opposite direction, maybe in the following days.
Then, maybe after weeks, scientists will try to aim the beams at each other so that protons collide.
The collisions will be monitored by large and sophisticated detectors installed around the LHC. The detectors will pass the information on to scientists for detailed analysis.
"This experiment is of milestone significance, and it can lay a foundation for new discoveries about the universe," said Professor Qian Sijin of Beijing University, a participant of the process.
As the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the LHC can produce beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010.
Some 10,000 scientists from around the world have participated in the construction of the 10 billion Swiss franc (9.5 billion U.S. dollars) instrument, which started in 1994.
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