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“Science: The Final Frontier. These are the adventures of the LHC. It’s mission: To explore the Big Bang… To seek out new particles, and find answers… To Boldly Go Where No Scientist Has Gone Before.”

Today is a historical day for any physicist in the world: the Large hadron Collider in CERN finally smashed sub-atomic particles into each other with record energy, creating thousands of mini-Big Bangs like the primeval explosion that gave birth to the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

After many setbacks and delays, physicists can finally pursue their dream of exploring the unknown.  And in doing so they already broke many records.

I started blogging about the Large Hadron Collider in 2007 (for those who do not know what is: it’s an experiment in which scientist try to recreate the circumstances surrounding the Big Bang to see if they can isolate the so-called “God particle” that gives this universe it’s shape).

I was eagerly looking forward to the LHC being started up, but my patience and that of many scientists got tested for a long period. On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time. Nine days later however, a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets stopped the whole project straight in its tracks.

It took CERN over a year to repair everything. Last year, 20 November 2009, the proton beams were successfully circulated again, achieving a 1.18 TeV per beam and beating the record previously held by the Tevatron.

Soon after 1100 GMT today and after two efforts earlier in the day got thwarted due to minor technical problems, the LHC collided beams of particles together at an energy of 7 TeV, or 7 million million electron volts: three and a half times more than ever achieved in a particle accelerator.

The particle beams were travelling at just a fraction under the speed of light when they hit each other. But we are only starting: after 2013 the collider will be boosted to collision energy of 14 TeV. Enough energy for what might become the final experiment.

Maybe science will get more answers now. I suspect, however, that for every answer we get, new questions will be raised.

We live in exiting times indeed.