[LINK] "Switzerland: 'Big Bang' experiment starts successfully"

[rfmcdonald]

Not too much more than 25 minutes ago, ADNKronos produced the article "Switzerland: 'Big Bang' experiment starts successfully".

Scientists have hailed a successful start-up for the world's most powerful particle accelerator in an experiment to recreate the conditions a few moments after the so-called Big Bang - or start of the universe.

Cheers echoed around the control room at CERN - the European organisation for nuclear research - after scientists fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the super-collider.

The first - clockwise - beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second - anti-clockwise - beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

The super-collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.

So far, so good, not that this non-apocalpytic outcome isn't a surprise. CERN's search for the Higgs boson will be interesting to follow.