After its first official test, which took place yesterday and ended up being a complete success, the Large Hadron Collider is ready for the next stages scheduled for the ambitious project. The testing session was the first real proof that the work on the project, carried out over the past 15 years, was indeed accurate and that so far there have been no engineering mistakes.

The LHC, with an investment of more than $9 billion, is the world’s biggest and also most expensive science machine. The 8,000 scientists involved in the project managed to work together on this long term project that demanded their full commitment in order to ensure that everything goes as planned.

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.

Such colliders, only on a much smaller scale, have been used for quite some time in order to study the formation of the atom. At a certain point, scientists believed that an atom’s nucleus is formed of protons and neutrons, these being the smallest of its components. More carefully handled examinations proved that protons and neutrons are composed of quarks and gluons and also that there are several other particles and forces involved. These continuous scientific breakthroughs keep fueling the nations’ interest for building new and better machines for all sorts of projects and keep the scientific and technological progress going at a constant pace.

The announcement about the test led to many negative reactions from certain scientists who consider the whole project extremely dangerous as in their opinion, it might cause a black hole or a similar phenomenon. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) responded immediately, denying all comments and explaining that all the needed measures have been taken in order to avoid any sort of incident.

Its point of view was strengthened by the result of the first test but not everyone is convinced. Apparently, the test is considered by some far from conclusive as the complete fire up of the machine is the one with the potential to harm. The people supporting this theory say that the situation will only get truly dangerous once the machine is completely powered. CERN’s officials addressed these concerns by saying that any sort of mishap will only cause the machine to malfunction, without any sort of risk for the near-by population.

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. Other major contributors are Russia, India, Canada and Japan.