Well - we are mostly all here still!

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The first - clockwise - beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second - anti-clockwise - beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

So far, all the beams have been stopped, or "dumped", after just a few circuits.

On Thursday, engineers hoped to inject clockwise and anti-clockwise protons again, but this time they plan to "close the orbit", letting the beams run continuously for a few seconds each.
It appears that low-energy collisions could happen in the next few days. This will allow engineers to calibrate instruments, but will not produce data of scientific interest.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test.

The Edinburgh scientist who gave his name to the Higgs Boson particle said it was "pretty likely" it would be found by the Big Bang experiment.

Professor Peter Higgs, 79, expressed confidence he would be proved right, 44 years after he proposed his theory.

Scientists hope the Large Hadron Collider operated by Cern will uncover the sought after particle, which is sometimes called the God Particle.

It is a theoretical explanation for the origin of mass in the Universe

It is also thought without the particle there would be no gravity.

But the particle - nicknamed the God Particle because it is thought to be so fundamental to the evolution of the universe - has not been discovered and to this day it remains a theory.

But at the end of the day it is still gong to be interesting to see if they can achieve the goal of changing our understanding of physics and building on the knowledge we have from teh giants who came before us.

links on the Collider

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html