The Large Hadron Collider, built by European scientists, is expected to bring about the biggest advances in the field of particle physics and other related fields in decades. For some time, tangible advancements in physics lagged behind as the capabilities to experiment theoretical possibilities did not keep up with researchers' desires.

Now, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider and its highly sensitive detectors are effectively the world's most advanced particle physics experiment, which is also backed by some mega-powerful computers to process the large amounts of data extracted from the detectors. There are some allegations that the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is somewhat similar or even better than the LHC. This is indeed very false: it's not the accelerator itself which is much better (and it is), but rather the detectors and the entire computer processing system that make the Large Hadron Collider by far the best particle accelerator, ever.

The powerful machine was designed to offer scientists an inside view at an explosion very similar to the one that caused the so-called ‘big bang’ phenomenon – a theory about a massive explosion responsible for the formation of the stars, the planets and everything else found in the Universe.

The experiment will be possible by using a series of magnetic accelerators to take beams of protons to up to 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV) and collide them together all across the machine’s 27 kilometers.

In February, the last piece of the ATLAS detector, the world’s largest general-purpose particle detector, has been lowered down a 300 feet shaft at the European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN) underground facility along the Swiss-French border. This concluded the construction of the high-tech device which started in 2003.

The project will look for signs of the Higgs particle, which is believed by some scientists to be responsible for giving other particles their mass. CERN said in its statement that its entire muon spectrometer system contains an area equal to three football fields, including 1.2 million independent electronic channels.

The scientific base was built at the border between Switzerland and France and demanded the assistance of thousands of workers and scientists from more than 85 countries. The United States, an observer country, sent more than 1.200 scientists and also contributed with $531 million.

Only one elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model has not yet been detected: the Higgs boson, which is thought to interact with other particles to give them mass. Scientists really believe in its existence and hope not only to be sure of its actual existence but also hope to find additional space dimensions. Scientists say there’s nothing to worry about, as the safety of the project, 20 years in the making, has been thoroughly considered.

CERN, the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. Its Member States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The United States is one of the Observers.

Unfortunately for the United States, the European accomplishment is just the tip of the iceberg in what appears to be a continuous diminishing of our country's scientific and research efforts. While tremendous amounts of money have been spent for waging war, funding on high-end research has been drastically cut.

In the long run, it is very likely that the technological edge which the United States once had will erode completely, if that is not already the case.