Scientists gear up to witness Big Bang recreated at LHC

Washington, Nov 3 (ANI): UK Scientists working on CERN's Large Hadron Collider's (LHC's) in Switzerland are gearing up to witness the result of the collision that first created fundamental particles that existed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.

The University of Birmingham physicists will see the result of accelerating and smashing together lead nuclei at the highest possible energies, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs to recreate the fundamental particles that existed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.

"Although the tiny fireballs will only exist for a fleeting moment (less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) the temperatures will reach over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the center of the Sun," said Dr. David Evans.

"This will allow us to make and study a tiny piece of what the universe was made of just a millionth of a second after the Big Bang", he added.

From the study, physicists hope to learn more about the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature, which not only binds the nuclei of atoms together but also is responsible for 98 percent of their mass.

"We are all really looking forward to these first collisions which will be created in a safe, controlled environment. If all goes well, we could even see some new discoveries before the end of next year," Evans said.

Whilst the conditions created in the LHC detector will be a world record for manmade experiments and represent a great achievement for science and engineering, they pose no threat. More energetic particle reactions occur regularly throughout the Universe, including in the upper atmosphere of the Earth itself. (ANI)