Cern's atom smasher starts to deliver its promise

The world’s largest atom smasher today conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those immediately after the creation of the universe.

In a milestone for the $10bn (€745m) Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists collided the beams at an energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.

The collisions herald a new era for researchers at at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in a 17-mile circular tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record.

Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorise was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of anti-matter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorise gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.

Today’s initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant the protons had to be “dumped” from the collider and new beams had to be injected.

The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider’s launch with great fanfare on September 10, 2008. Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical joint overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts.

It cost $40m (€30m) to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November last year, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data. It quickly eclipsed the next largest accelerator – the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel at a couple of degrees above absolute zero. CERN used powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.

When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.

The experiments will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil Earth by creating micro black holes – subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.