Large Hadron Collider, or LHC,

Mysteries of universe at focus of giant
Scientists at the CERN laboratory, near the foothills of the Jura mountains, will pursue long elusive concepts such as "dark matter," "dark energy", extra dimensions and, most of all, the "Higgs Boson" believed to have made it all possible.
"The LHC was conceived to radically change our vision of the universe," said CERN's French Director-General Robert Aymar. "Whatever discoveries it brings, mankind's understanding of our world's origins will be greatly enriched."
CERN scientists have been at pains to deny suggestions by some critics that the experiment could create tiny black holes of intense gravity that could suck in the whole planet.
The experiment is projected to restage trillions of times the moment some 15 billion years ago when, as cosmologists believe, an unimaginably dense and hot object the size of a small coin exploded, expanding rapidly to create stars, planets and eventually life on Earth.
The 10 billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) effort at CERN, the 20-nation European Organization for Nuclear Research on the edge of Geneva, begins with a relatively simple procedure: pumping a particle beam around the underground tunnel.
Technicians will first attempt to push the beam in one direction round the tightly-sealed collider, some 100 meters (yards) underground.