Computing

The world's biggest machine, the Large Hadron Collider, has been switched on and potentially it will rewrite the laws of physics.

The machine is 27km long and can be found beneath the France, Switzerland border close to Lake Geneva. Costing over 3.5 billion (of which Britain has donated 500 million) this is the biggest experiment to have ever taken place and has been worked on by teams of scientists from all over the world.

Hopefully the tests will recreate the conditions just after the big bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself. As a side effect global warming could be halted, cancer conquered and time travel made possible.

However if the experiment goes wrong, as many fear, it could result in a quasar (a spinning mass of energy) tearing the earth apart.