The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful cannon ever made, but it is a cannon of science, not of war.

The collider aims to explore the nature of the universe just moments after the big bang by looking deeper and deeper into the heart of matter. The deeper we delve into the atom, the more energy it requires and the farther back into the deep history of the universe it takes us.

The quantum physics of the collider may be far removed from everyday life, but the device is so extreme as to constantly stretch the boundaries of engineering and technology. Simply building the collider has generated new medical, industrial and consumer technologies, not to mention advanced software for data analysis and networking.

Despite fears from an alarmist demonstration of medieval ignorance and superstition by end-of-the world fanatics and conspiracy theorists and its key role in “;Angels and Demons,”; the proton collisions did not create black holes or tears in space-time.

The initial trial of a planned two-year run at 7 trillion electron volts succeeded in colliding protons at three times higher than the highest energy levels attained previously, accelerating the protons to more than 99.999 percent of the speed of light before they collided and produced a shower of particle tracks as the protons disintegrated.

A worldwide computing grid for the collider combines the power of more than 140 computer centers across a 33-country collaboration for the analysis and management of the more than 15 million gigabytes of data flowing in every year.

Physicists will be examining the data for smaller particles, confirmation of dark matter, other dimensions, supersymmetry and other theories in particle physics that can only be tested at the high energies generated by the collider.

It is the hope of the physicists that the collider can capture a collision that will identify the existence of the Holy Grail of quantum physics, the Higgs Boson.

This particle is thought to be responsible for imparting mass to all subatomic particles. The theoretical Higgs field permeates all of space-time and acts to convert energy to mass. Without mass there would be no gravity, and without gravity there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets.

Physicists jokingly began referring to the Higgs as the “;God particle”; because it seems to be the significant missing link in uniting the fundamental forces that hold the universe together. Unfortunately the usage grew out of context and developed a life of its own among the pseudoscience community.

The Higgs particle exists thus far only as a theoretical solution to an equation, but it is central to most cosmological theories that include the big bang. Finding evidence for its existence would cap the success of a century of attempts to reconcile general relativity with quantum theory and mark a new era in understanding the universe.