Machine to recreate 'big bangs'

Big Bangs: A 27km-long machine buried in a hole in the ground may soon be revealing the secrets of the universe.

It will imitate on a small scale the conditions last experienced at the "big bang", the creation of the universe. The machine is a particle collider at Cern in Geneva.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to begin operating next year, will send atomic particles at close to light speed around a 27km circuit, then smash them together, creating massive energies.

"It is the biggest scientific experiment every attempted," said Dr Brian Cox, a particle physicist at Cern, Europe's collaborative physics research centre.

"Why do we do this? Essentially we are going to make mini 'big bangs'," he told a session at the BA festival in Norwich.

Everything about the LHC is on a grand scale. It sits 100 metres below the surface, will create massive bursts of energy and represented a massive construction challenge.