GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider, located underground near the French-Swiss border, say proton beams have collided for the first time in the machine.

The scientists told the BBC the event occurred Monday as two beams were circulated simultaneously around the 16-mile-long ringed tunnel that's located nearly 330 feet beneath the ground in Switzerland.


When fully operational, the LHC will smash together numerous beams of protons to shed light on what conditions existed in the universe less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

"It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, told the BBC. "But we need to keep a sense of perspective -- there's still much to do before we can start the LHC physics program."

The LHC is the world's largest machine.