Mini Black Holes and the Large Hadron Collider

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Scientists at Cern hold their breath as they prepare to fire up the LHC

If all goes to plan, beams of particles will begin whizzing around the LHC on Friday evening for the first time since last year's explosion



Cern scientists look at computer screens during LHC switch-on

Cern scientists anxiously monitor their screens during the switch-on of the LHC in September last years. Photograph: AFP

A giant scientific instrument that was designed to recreate the big bang but blew itself up in the process will be back in business on Friday.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the nuclear research organisation near Geneva, aim to have beams of subatomic particles whizzing around the machine on Friday evening, and will begin smashing them together soon after.

The first collisions will mark the end of a long and frustrating period for the researchers, who waited eight years for the machine to be built only to see it explode shortly after being switched on in September last year. Repairs and a new safety system cost an estimated £24m.

The machine, which occupies a 27km tunnel 100m beneath the French-Swiss border, will probe some of the deepest mysteries of the universe by crashing subatomic particles into one another at close to the speed of light.

The collisions are expected to reveal tantalising signs of new physics that could include extra dimensions of space and "supersymmetry", a theory that calls for every particle in the universe to have an invisible partner.

Scientists also hope the machine will finally discover the elusive Higgs boson, aka the God particle, which imbues other particles with mass. It may also expose the nature of dark matter, a mysterious, invisible material that stretches across the cosmos and collects around galaxies.