The largest, most expensive scientific experiment ever attempted by humans had a succesful test run today somerhere beneath the border of France and Switzerland. Essentially, it's a giant, 17 mile long circular tunnel. The purpose is relatively simple: it's job is to get protons (a type of hadron) going so fast (almost the speed of light) that they crash into each other real good. It's all terribly sciencey, but the basic basic idea idea is that if you ram elementary particles together at ridiculous speeds, you can break them apart and find new particles that will either prove or disprove some of the core assumptions of modern physics. The Higgs Boson, for example, is a mathematical requirement for mass in the universe--these particles would surround all of the other particles and essentially weigh them down. But no one has ever proven its existence. Craziness, I tells ya.
Today was mostly a test. The first collisions won't occur until next month, at which point the collider will be able to recreate conditions in the universe a few milliseconds after the big bang.
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