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Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a ‘mini-Big Bang’
"This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun."
- David Evans from the University of Birmingham
The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a 'mini-Big Bang' by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.
Proton collisions could help spot the elusive Higgs boson particle and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry.
But for the next four weeks, scientists at the LHC will concentrate on analysing the data obtained from the lead ion collisions.
This way, they hope to learn more about the plasma the Universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.