Hadron Collider sets new record

Scientists in Switzerland say they are "going where nobody has been before" after setting a high-power collision record with the Large Hadron Collider.

The experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), will allow researchers to examine the nature of matter and the origin of stars and planets by creating a mini-version of the Big Bang.

"This is a major breakthrough. We are going where nobody has been before. We have opened a new territory for physics," said Oliver Buchmueller, one of the key figures on the £6.3 billion project.

Tuesday's experiment took place at a record total collision energy of 7 billion billion electron volts and at a nano-fraction of a second slower than the speed of light in the 16.8 mile Large Hadron Collider, about a hundred meters below the Swiss-French border.

The experiment was delayed for a few hours due to issues with the power supply and safety overrides, but officials were quick to dismiss any suggestion that it was a repeat of a major incident in September 2008 that seriously damaged parts of the experiment and delayed the full launch of the project until now.

During the coming months and years, CERN scientists expect the project to lift the veil on some of the mysteries of the cosmos - how matter was converted to mass after the fireball of the Big Bang and what is the dark, or invisible, matter that makes up an estimated 25 per cent of the universe.