Tuesday, 26 Aug, 2008 Science

According to the project chief, Lyn Evans of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), a number of tests cleared way for the beginning in September of an experiment which scientists hope would show how the universe was created after the Big Bang.

Evans stated that the tests in the underground Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine went smoothly, without any problems.

"We look forward to a resounding success when we make our first attempt to send a beam all the way round the LHC," said Evans, the head of a multinational team of scientists that worked on the development of the LHC, which runs deep under the territories of France and Switzerland.

On September scientists plan to send a full particle beam around the LHC pipe in one direction. This will be a prelude before researchers send the beams in both directions to see them collide. Scientists from CERN and other laboratories around the world will monitor the collision of the two particle clusters on their computers. They will look for a special particle that caused the appearance of life.

Scientists hope that by recreating the Big Bang they will be able to understand how our universe expanded. The experiment will also show the way stars and planets came together out of primordial chaos that followed.

Previously, scientists at the United States failed to track the particle that made life possible. However, scientists consider that the LHC, which they say is a great step forward in the field of technology, will make the difference.

The particle, which scientists hope to find, was named the "Higgs boson". The name comes from a Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who was the first to suggest about 50 years ago that such particle must exist. Scientists believe that the boson is an unexplained factor that holds matter together.

Higgs, a 79-year-old Edinburgh University professor considers that the particle will show up very quickly shortly after the beams collide in the LHC.

After visiting CERN he said: "If it doesn't, I shall be very, very puzzled."

Source: Reuters