Big Bang Experiment in Switzerland today
The experiment to re-enact the Big Bang theory will start on Wednesday when the first beams of protons will be fired around a 27-kilometre tunnel.
The beams will then be fired in the opposite direction in about a month. The beams travelling in opposite directions will collide but some critics fear that this collision, could create "black holes" that would endanger the planet.
The machine at CERN promises the scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.
The CERN collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel, 150 to 500 feet under the countryside on the French-Swiss border.
The project has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities, some 1,200 of them from the United States, which contributed 531 million dollars of the project's price tag of nearly four billion US dollars.
But it hasn't all been plain sailing, the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems.
Scientists also reject suggestions the experiments will bring the end of the world.
What is the Big Bang Theory?
It is most popular and plausible explanation for the origin of our Universe. At a certain point in time -- about 13.7 billion years ago -- there was nothing. And then, the Universe was born. The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain how it happened.
So there was a big bang, which created the Universe!
Not really. The Big Bang was most likely an expansion - which still continues.
What's the evidence?
According to the Hubble's Law galaxies are moving away from the Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. This observation supports the expansion of the Universe and suggests that the Universe was once compacted.
It would also mean that big bang released some heat.
So it seems. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered that a -270.425 degree Celsius cosmic radiation pervaded the universe. This is believed to be the remnant of the Big Bang.
