"Super Collider May Reveal Mysteries of World’s Creation"

On the morning of September 10, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will power up the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC will create the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

In the upcoming months and years, scientists will examine how the world was created after the Big Bang. They hope to determine what the early universe was made of, why matter overcame antimatter and where dark matter exists. They are also looking to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, which explains why particles have mass.

The launch of the LHC, a machine that took $10 billion and two decades to build, has attracted a great deal of media attention—both positive and negative—and a rap video explaining the collider and the science behind it has received millions of hits on YouTube.

The launch has also triggered fears that it will create black holes that might “eat the planet from the inside.” A German scientist has filed a lawsuit to stop the LHC launch, and the CERN scientists have received death threats.

Even though it will be another six to eights weeks before there is any proton collision, Wednesday’s launch will receive heavy news coverage. BBC Radio 4 will feature live coverage throughout the day and CERN is offering a live Webcast.