GENEVA -- The world's largest particle collider today successfully completed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons around a 17-mile underground ring fitted with magnets and detectors that CMU physicists helped construct. Scientists hope it is the next step to understanding the universe's makeup.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the Large Hadron Collider.
Today's experiment is a small-scale re-enactment of the "Big Bang." At about 4:26 a.m. EST, the clockwise test was complete. Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.
Eventually, two beams will be fired in opposite directions with the aim of re-creating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe. CMU's Tom Ferguson devoted almost 15 years to the construction of the vast $9 billion underground Swiss laboratory.
"What we're hoping is that new particles that have never been discovered will be produced," said Ferguson, part of an 11-member team of Carnegie Mellon scientists contributing to the project.
Scientists at the CERN laboratory will pursue long elusive concepts such as dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions and, most of all, the "Higgs boson" -- the theoretical "God particle" that scientists believe made the Big Bang possible.
The start of the collider -- described as the biggest physics experiment in history -- comes over the objections of some skeptics who fear the collision of protons could eventually imperil Earth.
