Scientists smash atoms in record bid to grasp the Big Bang

SCIENTISTS smashed sub-atomic particles into each other with record energy yesterday, aiming to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang that gave rise to the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

The experiment at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) drew applause from the 80 scientists in the tracking room at the sprawling research complex on the French-Swiss border.

“It just shows what we can do in pushing knowledge forward on where we came from, how the early universe evolved,” CERN director general Rolf Heuer said.

The collisions, the high point so far of the 10 billion Swiss franc (about €7bn) experiment, which will continue for years, marked a significant step forward for physics and could be seen as a giant leap for mankind, he said.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest machine, slammed beams of particles together at a record collision energy of 7 tera-electron volts (TeV) or seven billion billion electron volts – three and a half times faster than previously achieved in a particle accelerator.

Data from the collisions over the coming years will be analysed by scientists worldwide, linked by a computer network known as the Grid, to gain insights into the nature of matter and the origins of stars and planets.

CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci said: “There are known unknowns out there, like dark matter and new dimensions about which we hope to learn.

“But it is possible that we will find some unknown unknowns which could be hugely important for mankind. With the LHC, we have the tool that we need.”

The collisions took place at a nano-fraction of a second slower than the speed of light in the LHC’s 27km tunnel about 330ft below ground.

CERN scientists expect the project to reveal how matter was converted to mass after the fireball of the Big Bang and what is the dark, or invisible, matter which makes up an estimated 25% of the universe.

“In the course of 2010 and 2011 we will be compiling the data and we expect to make real discoveries,” Oliver Buchmueller, one of the key figures in the experiment, said. “By the end of 2010, we think we will find evidence of dark material and confirmation that it is there and what it is.”

Buchmueller said he thought the experiment would only find the theoretical particle known as the Higgs boson after 2013, when the collider is boosted to collision energy of 14 TeV.

The Higgs boson is believed to have made possible the emergence of stars, planets and eventually life from the matter that spewed out of the Big Bang.

The experiment was delayed for a few hours by technical glitches with the power supply and an over-sensitive magnet safety system.