I can’t seem to get the song, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It by R.E.M out of my head today. The song was released in the late 80’s, and made famous during the early-mid 90’s. Most of it due to its’ association with Independence Day, a movie about aliens invading Earth. I now know of something else the famous apocalypse song can attach itself to, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC which is referred to as the “Big Bang Machine” was finally turned on today. Deep underground at a CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) facility, rests the largest particle collider ever constructed. Everyone, specifically the engineers working on the project held their breath today, as the machine that has been 14 years in the making powered up. As the beams of protons were sent around the LHC for the first time, the engineers cheered as all went smooth. The machine won’t reach its full potential for doing what it was made to until about a month after being turned on.

The device was created as a means for discovering some of the greatest mysteries that physicists face today. The theory behind anti-matter is the largest candidate of what physicists hope to find with the LHC. We know about anti-matter, but the mystery is its interaction with matter and the LHC can hopefully answer some of those mysteries. What most physicists are wanting to see is the Higgs boson particle in action. What’s referred to as the “God particle” is theorized as being what gives other particles mass. Both of these concepts is the reason behind the naming of the LHC, as the ‘Big Bang Machine’. Because most physicists theorize that both of the elements were the key for the Big Bang theory.

There were skeptics who believe that the LHC was capable of creating a black hole. Which if it expanded would bring Earth to an end as we know it, or some crazy dimension. The experts working on the LHC have refuted these claims, as the LHC isn’t powerful enough to create black holes large enough to cause any damage. If a black hole does occur, it would be so tiny that the radiation emitting from it would destroy it almost instantaneously.

What could be considered more impressive than the LHC’s potential of discovery or destruction, is how long took to build and how much it cost. The LHC has been 14 years in the making, as it started out as the beginning of a different collider. In 2008, the budget for the LHC is estimated to be anywhere from $6 billion-$10 billion. So, let’s hope for the sake of investment that this machine is actually able to discover something.

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