The Big Bang and the First 380,000 Years

Abstract

Bearing witness to our running mantra that within the macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm, the LHC will enable physicists not only to study the substructure of atoms. It will also enable them to investigate phenomena that haven’t occurred in our universe for 14 billion years. Indeed, some of the events that will be studied at CERN haven’t occurred since the very first moments that the universe sparked into existence. This is an incredible state of affairs, and while the LHC is not actually recreating the beginnings of the universe, or for that matter creating any new universes, it is allowing researchers to study the physical phenomenon that shaped and molded the very first fledgling instants of our cosmos.

Of old was an age, when was emptiness, There was sand nor sea, nor surging waves; Unwrought was Earth, unroofed was Heaven – An abyss yawning and no blade of grass.

Völsungakvida en Nýja – J. R. R. Tolkien