In the world's biggest particle accelerator, the most powerful energy beams ever created have successfully collided with one another. Scientists have already recorded thousands of events from over two hours of experimentation.
 
Beams of tiny particles, known as protons, have, from around 1330 CET today, been racing at the speed of light in opposite directions around the 27-kilometre circular tunnel, the Large Hadron Collider. Each collision creates the conditions like those that existed immediately after the Big Bang. Five detectors in the collider are recording the type of particles that result.

It is not only the speed of the proton beams that counts, but also the amount of energy they contain. That energy level has been raised in gradual steps. Researcher Paul de Jong of the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef) sums up the tension that was building in Geneva. "Expectations are so high, our hearts are fit to burst".
 
"The most exciting thing is that the beams will reach the highest energy level we can produce at present for the very first time - and that indeed is a world record. And then we will fire them at one another. This will produce the first ever proton-to-proton collisions at the highest energy level ever reached. So we don't actually know what's going to happen. And that's what we're going to try to measure!"
 
Vanishing particles
The proton explosion and the extreme amount of energy it releases resembles the situation almost 14 billion years ago. In the fledgling universe, chaos reigned supreme. But there were particles which brought order to the chaos. The problem is that some of them have vanished without a trace.
 
There's the particle called the Higgs boson, for instance, which has been dubbed the "God Particle". This missing elementary particle has been hypothesised to explain how all other particles gain mass. No Higgs boson, no structure. The Netherlands has helped build a special instrument, the Atlas Detector, which is designed to trace this enigmatic particle.
 
Dark matter
This is far from being the only missing piece in the puzzle, as Nikhef director, Frank Linde, explains.
 
"We are hard at work looking for new kinds of particles that can explain the matter in our universe. Other avenues of investigation have taught us that the matter we see all around us - the electrons and protons that form the building blocks of the world we experience - accounts for around four percent of the matter in the universe. As for the rest, we haven't a clue."
 
Scientists think that the remaining 96 percent consists of dark matter and dark energy. The research group led by Paul de Jong is searching for remnants of the Big Bang which might have given rise to this dark matter. It they succeed, it will be a red letter day for cosmologists.
 
"Yes, absolutely. I think it will be an enormous leap forward in our understanding of how the universe came to be and how the structures in the universe came to be. The constellations of the Milky Way, the stars. All of this is still a mystery."
 
High time
Nikhef director Frank Linde regards this new phase as a personal highlight, one that has been a long time coming. Over ten years ago he became involved in what is the biggest scientific experiment ever. He has been under its spell ever since.
 
"It's high time to produce a sustained series of collisions and to obtain measurement data. And of course the crowning glory on all that work that we are finally about to begin. At last all the effort we've invested is beginning to pay off."
 
The particle accelerator will run at full power for the next 18 to 24 months, only interrupted by a short break for maintenance at the end of this year. We can expect the first data in a few month's time at the earliest. Science is boldly going where it has never gone before.
 
LINKS
Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef)

CERN Website
CERN Atlas Project

Follow CERN on Twitter (general information)
Follow the Large Hadron Collider on Twitter (technical information)
 

Video: Large Hadron rap (the particle accelerator explained by those who work there):