'Big Bang' machine passes 1st test

Sep 10 - International scientists celebrated the successful start of a huge particle-smashing machine aiming to recreate the conditions of the "Big Bang".

Scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva, fired two beams of proton particles in opposite directions around Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) 27km-long (17 miles) ring, buried below the Swiss-French border.

Experiments using the $9 billion dollar LHC, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.

Helen Long reports.