News

On way to biggest bang since birth of universe

December 01, 2009 Edition 2

GENEVA: The "Big Bang" experiment at Cern near Geneva scored a world record yesterday by accelerating beams to the highest energy achieved in a particle collider, the research centre announced.

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), said this marked a major milestone on the way to a test next year which it is hoped will unlock secrets of the origin of the universe. The energy of the twin beams circulated around 27km tunnels deep underground went - at 1.18 trillion electric volts (TeV) - well past the previous highest (just under 1 TeV) in a collider at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The beam energy now achieved in the Large Hadron Collider - a vast complex of huge magnets, electronics and computers underground on the Franco-Swiss border - is a precursor to the real "Big Bang" experiment. This object is to smash particles together at a force of about 7 TeV and create conditions one billionth of a second after the explosion 13.7bn years ago that shaped the universe. - Reuters