Repaired Hadron Collider Smashes Protons

November 24, 2009 5:16 a.m. EST

Geneva, Switzerland (AHN) - Nuclear scientists successfully put back the Large Hadron Collider to work Monday with a successful first test of smashing proton beams at the speed of light.

The underground proton smasher run by physicists of the European Center for Nuclear Research outside Geneva aims to recreate the forces and particles that existed seconds after the Big Bang by accelerating and smashing together two beams of protons.

The test used energies of 450 billion electron volts to accelerate the protons at opposite direction. Succeeding tests will use 1.2 trillion electron volts per beam, surpassing that of the Tevatron at Fermilab in Illinois. The Tevatron had achieved energies of 900 billion electron volts.

The Hadron collider's ultimate goal is to smash beams of protons at energies of 7 trillion electron volts.