Smashing Big Bang experiment gets turned on

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists around the world, some in pyjamas and others with champagne, celebrated the first tests on Wednesday of a huge particle-smashing machine they hope will simulate the "Big Bang" that created the universe.

Experiments using the underground Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.

Staff in the control room on the border of Switzerland and France clapped as two beams of particles were sent silently first one way and then the other around the LHC's 17-mile (27-km) underground chamber.

"Things can go wrong at any time," said project leader Lyn Evans, who wore jeans and running shoes for the LHC's debut.

"But this morning we had a great start."

It will be weeks or months before two particles ever crash together in the giant tube, and even longer before scientists can interpret results, said Jos Engelen, chief scientific officer of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"Anything between a year and four years, depending on how difficult this new physics is to find," Engelen said.

Pyjama-clad scientists calling themselves "Nerds in Nightshirts" partied at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois as they waited late into the night for the first signals from the 10 billion Swiss franc (5 billion pound) machine.