Physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said they had created 10 million mini "big bangs" in the first week of mega-power operations of the subterranean Large Hadron Collider.
"It's all looking pretty good. We are getting a mass of data," spokesman James Gillies said of the experiments, in which tiny particles are smashed together at a fraction of a second under the speed of light. The collisions create simulations on a tiny scale of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
By tracking how particles behave after colliding, researchers hope to unveil secrets such as what makes up dark matter, why matter gained mass, and whether there are more dimensions than the four already known.