The Large Hedron Collider is designed to run proton atoms at spped around a 27km raceway till collisions take place. These collisions are supposer to be micro-miniature representations of the "big bang', and data can be collected at the one millionth of a second point after, which theory says, matter producing the universe as we know it began. Time travel is not possible, but this thought was brough about by some idiot who heard they would have a window into time.
The collisions themselves will be nothing particularly earth-shattering, in fact, they will have no more impact than a mosquito hitting the face according to the scientist on Enough Rope last night.
Looking more into this today, there are also hopes that the manipulation of the protons will help scientists with regard to helping to clear cancers, by precisely pinpointing the cancer and hitting it direct.
It is also said that scientists logging into the squillions of gigabytes of data from this research will also be able to get an insight into the internet of the future.
The Collider won't be up to speed till next dear, but is projected to begin pumping out a tsunami of raw data equivalent to one DVD (five gigabytes) every five seconds. Its annual output is expected to be 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes). That's an awful lot of data for us to learn from!!!!!!!!!
Imagine the spin-offs from this, if the space shuttle flights did as much as it did in advancing so much to enrich our lives!!
I really believe it's a storm in a teacup, and we will hear very little of this once people forget about it and focus on the next bit of excitement.
PS. there was also talk that situations could arise from the likes of Dr Who................... GET THE BARBIE READY GUYS................... we're about to be invaded by squillions of earth-hungry mutant Krill!!!!!!!!!