Collider probing mysteries of the universe at the speed of light

According to documents from CERN, as the European Organization for Nuclear Research is known, each of the two beams will contain about 3,000 bunches of particles. Each bunch will hold as many as 100 billion particles. Despite these huge numbers, the particles are so tiny that a collision between any two is quite small. However, since the beams will be traveling at near light speed around the 17-mile tube, they'll cross each other about 30 million times per second, resulting in an estimated 600 million collisions.

If a beam circulates around the tunnel for 10 hours, for instance, it will travel more than 10 billion kilometers, which is the distance it would take to travel to Neptune and back.

With the Big Bang theory, scientists largely believe that more than 13 billion years ago an amazingly dense object the size of maybe a coin expanded into the universe that we know now -- with planets, stars, black holes and life.

Bolek Wyslouch, a professor of physics at MIT who has been working on the collider project for the last seven years, said that a main goal of the experiments is to find the elusive Higgs particle that is believed to be responsible for giving other particles their mass. Though its existence hasn't been proven yet, it's believed that Higgs particles are what give electrons their weight, for instance.

Scientists are also hoping the particle collider will give them information about dark energy and dark matter.

"This is part of the quest to explore our surroundings. It's part of the quest to understand our world and ourselves," said Wyslouch. "We are trying to describe the basic elements of the matter surrounding us -- to understand the basic infrastructure of how things work. The knowledge of this microscopic world can be translated into knowledge of the whole universe -- how it was formed, where all the matter is coming from."

As the time for tomorrow's experiment has neared, rumors have increasingly circulated around the Internet that the experiments might destroy the universe by accidentally creating a black hole that would suck everything and everyone into it.

CERN released a report late last week saying that safety fears about the LHC are "unfounded." CERN Director General Robert Aymar was quoted as saying that any suggestion that there's a risk is "pure fiction."