Large Hadron Collider produces first proton collisions in Big Bang missionUltimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were one trillionth to two trillionths of a second after the Big Bang, which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
Cern's Director General Rolf Heuer said yesterday's collisions were actually the side effect of the quick advances being made by the LHC during its startup phase.
He said that the scientists would be proceeding cautiously, just a driver would with the first production model of a new car.
"We'll never accelerate this the first time with a kick-start to its maximum velocity," he said. "It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time. But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”
David Barney, a physicist working at Cern said: "It's quite amazing really, we never expected this to go so quickly. We're incredibly pleased, everything seems to be working excellently. The LHC hasn't actually accelerated particles yet - it hasn't made them go any faster than they were when they came into the tunnel.
"Cern intends to collide them at higher energy next week. It's going incredibly well and we don't really know what to expect next."
I'm trying to think of a good way to compare the Hubble Telescope vs the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Both are peering pretty seriously into the the Big, Mysterious, F---er called the Universe.
Who here actually believes experiments like NIF, Cern, ITER, etc. won't lead to important basic discoveries?