Large Hadron Collider Starts and We’re Still Here

Last night, physicists near Geneva switched on the largest, most powerful scientific tool ever built and the world did not vanish down a black hole, as alarmists had predicted. Instead, the $US8 billion ($9.9 billion) Large Hadron Collider successfully sent the first beam of protons — members of a group of subatomic particles called hadrons — hurtling around a 27km circular tunnel running beneath Switzerland and France. The event caused sighs of relief from more than 2000 scientists from 150 institutes in 45 countries, including Australia, who had waited 14 years for the moment