Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or man's first big attempt to answer one of the biggest questions of mankind

Man has now succeeded to set up one of his biggest experiments ever to understand the fundamentals of our universe and its creation. 

The Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in physics-speak, is now ready and will be circulating its first beams tomorrow, September 10th.

To make this seem a bit simple, what essentially happens in a particle accelerator is, well, acceleration of sub-atomic particles. The experiment at LHC will accelerate protons to reach somewhere very close to the speed of light. These accelerated fast moving (really fast moving!) protons will collide with each other and give rise to an environmental condition close to what was present during the genesis of our universe - the big bang.

It will then be upto the thousands of scientists involved in this project to collect data, analyze and propose various theories on why the universe started, how it settled into what it is today and what could possibly be the future. I am simply in awe of the fact that we have become intelligent enough to simulate conditions of the beginning of the universe and have set up this LHC.

The LHC has been set up on the outskirts of the border between France and Switzerland. The tunnel has a circumference of 27 km.

There are some concerns from various quarters regarding the safety of planet earth due to such a massive experiment. It is important to note that when protons, with negligible mass, travel at velocities close to the speed of light, will generate enormous (the word is not big enough) amount of energy. Some sceptics claim that this energy would be so concentrated within a small area, that it could lead to the creation of a black hole and the entire earth could collapse into it.

Most scientists, however, dismiss this and are geared up for tomorrow when the LHC shall be switched on.

Read some more on LHC here: The Large Hadron Collider Official Homepage

Wikipedia article on LHC: Large Hadron Collider

This is the quote from The Guardian on the LHC:

"Particle physics is the unbelievable in pursuit of the unimaginable. To pinpoint the smallest fragments of the universe you have to build the biggest machine in the world. To recreate the first millionths of a second of creation you have to focus energy on an awesome scale."