WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | Virginia Tech physics professor not worried about Big Bang machine

Virginia Tech physics professor not worried about Big Bang machine

An investigation into the makeup of the universe succeeded its first major test yesterday.  However, some worry the world's biggest physics experiment is tampering with nature.

Deep beneath the Swiss-French border, 300 feet to be exact, and 17 miles in circumference, the Hadron Collider is the largest scientific instrument in the world and the most powerful atom-smasher ever built.
 
This week, in a series of trial runs, a beam of protons successfully fired all the way around the tunnel.  Some skeptics warn the experiment could create black holes and lead to doomsday, but Leo Piilonen, a Virginia Tech professor of physics and a particle experimentalist, says it's not all that risky.

"Happens all the time in nature with cosmic rays, and the earth is still here, the moon is still here, the sun is here, and they haven't been swallowed up by similar reactions," he says.

Researchers will smash protons together and analyze the sub-atomic debris that's left over.  This gives rise to new insight into how the universe works.  It leads to better theories and better predictions.

Piilonen says the multi-billion dollar project is not expected to give us any practical applications.

"This is the search of knowledge for it's own sake which has its place in all the things that science does," he says.

It will still be about a month before protons traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions.  Final results may take up to a year.