CERN scientists resume probes into origin of universe

CERN scientists have staged their first speed-of-light particle collisions of the year, resuming their probes into the origins of the cosmos in the centre’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

“It started up well, with stable beams. We are even a little ahead of schedule after the winter break,” spokesman James Gillies said.

Oliver Buchmueller, a leading physicist on the €7 billion project, said the priority in 2011 and 2012 would be finding evidence of super-symmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter, black hole production and the elusive Higgs boson.

These concepts and ideas are at the new frontiers of science research as it pushes into the realms of what was once science fiction, giving a new impulse to cosmology and theorising on whether the known universe is alone, or one of many.

Cosmologists, like Briton Steven Hawking and US physicist and mathematician Brian Greene, are looking to the collider to turn up at least strong signs that there was another universe before the Big Bang or that others exist in parallel to our own.

CERN — the 21-nation European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva on the Swiss-French border — started what it calls “New Physics” in the giant underground LHC on March 31 last year, a project that could last into the next decade.

After eight months of intensive operations, the LHC was halted on December 6 for servicing of its complicated equipment.

In the 27km subterranean near-circular tunnel, minute particles are smashed together creating billions of mini-explosions like the Big Bang of 13.7 billion years ago which led to the formation of the known universe and everything in it.

These explosions are monitored and analysed by four research teams at CERN and by scientists around the world who are looking for new information about the primeval creation period.