Big Bang atom smasher sets record collisions

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher at CERN said today that they had collided protons at record power, mimicking conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe. See pics | Listen to podcast<IMG align="baseline" alt="video" src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/images/audio.gif"></IMG>What is CERN experiment| Cost | Purpose | Test Timeline

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher at CERN said on Tuesday that they had collided protons at record power, mimicking conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.

'This is physics in the making, the beginning of a new era, we have collisions at 7 TeV (teralectronvolts),' said Paola Catapano, a scientist and spokeswoman at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, referring to the record energy levels achieved.

Cheers erupted in seperate control rooms around the 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as the detectors recorded the collisions of beams of sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of light.