Geneva:
Scientists have switched on the world's largest atom smasher once again after the $10 billion machine suffered a failure more than a year ago. It has undergone a year of repairs after it was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault.
The Large Hadron Collider experiment is trying to find out the nature of the universe a few moments after the Big Bang.
Called the 'Lord of Rings', many feared the machine would bring an end to the Earth.
The particle accelerator has again been successfully switched on to recreate the birth of the universe, on a smaller scale of course.
The experiment is being carried out deep inside the earth, in a circular tunnel 27km long. Scientists hope to crash sub-atomic particles whirring around at the speed of light to better understand matter and energy.
Many feared it would cause doomsday by eating up the Earth in the tiny black holes it re-creates.
But John Ellis, a physicist at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Geneva, denies this. "This is complete rubbish, I am sorry, there are some speculative theories that suggest it might be possible to make very very tiny black holes. It should not be forgotten when we collide two protons, each of them has the energy of a fly. They are not big astrophysical black holes but tiny microscopic things," he says.
India has provided $40 million for the experiment. The precision jacks for the experiment are made by India.
Today the accelerator is working at very low power. Its full strength will be tried out much later after rigorous testing to ensure that a catastrophic failure like the last one is not repeated.
The Large Hadron Collider experiment is trying to find out the nature of the universe a few moments after the Big Bang.
Called the 'Lord of Rings', many feared the machine would bring an end to the Earth.
The particle accelerator has again been successfully switched on to recreate the birth of the universe, on a smaller scale of course.
The experiment is being carried out deep inside the earth, in a circular tunnel 27km long. Scientists hope to crash sub-atomic particles whirring around at the speed of light to better understand matter and energy.
Many feared it would cause doomsday by eating up the Earth in the tiny black holes it re-creates.
But John Ellis, a physicist at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Geneva, denies this. "This is complete rubbish, I am sorry, there are some speculative theories that suggest it might be possible to make very very tiny black holes. It should not be forgotten when we collide two protons, each of them has the energy of a fly. They are not big astrophysical black holes but tiny microscopic things," he says.
India has provided $40 million for the experiment. The precision jacks for the experiment are made by India.
Today the accelerator is working at very low power. Its full strength will be tried out much later after rigorous testing to ensure that a catastrophic failure like the last one is not repeated.
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