They flipped the switch, the proton’s flew, and the world hasn’t
blown up, yet. Three hundred feet underground on the French-
Swiss border, the biggest physics experiment in history launched
yesterday. The Large Hadron Collider. The biggest atom smasher
ever built: a seventeen-mile collision track, and sky-high hopes
for cosmic breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe —
of muons and gluons and quarks, of dark matter and black holes
and — maybe — whole new space-time dimensions. This hour, On
Point: Particle physics, a giant new tool, the shape of the
universe, and you. You can join the conversation. What are your
hopes and fears for the earth’s largest atom smasher? What’s the
cosmic question you want answered when it makes its own big
bang? Joining us from Paris is Adrian Cho, staff writer for
Science magazine. He was at the European Organization for
Nuclear Research in Switzerland yesterday when they fired up the
Large Hadron Collider for its first big test. Joining us from
Driggs, Idaho, is Leon L