Stephen Hawking: Large Hadron Collider vital for humanity
The work of the Large Hadron Collider is crucial for the survival of humanity, according to Professor Stephen Hawking.
By Jon Swaine
Last Updated: 12:14PM BST 10 Sep 2008
Prof Hawking said the £4.4bn machine, in which scientists are about to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, is "vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out."
And he sought to ease fears that the machine could have apocalyptic effects. "The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on," Prof Hawking said, adding: "The LHC is absolutely safe."
Scientists at the CERN research centre in Switzerland are aiming to use the machine to gain a better understanding of the birth and structure of the universe, and to fill gaps in our knowledge of physics.
They hope that by recreating the moments after the Big Bang - the massive explosion thought to have created the universe - the experiment will make clearer what the universe is made of, what makes it expand and also to predict its future.
Prof Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, said: "The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four." More
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