HERE WE GO
If watching the financial markets of late has seemed like the end of the world is near, something else has started a few thousand miles away, that may make all those problems seem so puny in comparison.
As the New York Times reports, the Hadron super-collider at CERN was finally switched on and may provide better understanding of how the universe really began so very long ago.
"After 14 years and $8 billion, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, succeeded in turning on the most powerful microscope ever built for investigating the elemental particles and forces of nature.
At 4:27 a.m., Eastern time, the protons made their first circuit around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss French border, and then made a return journey."
If all the science discussed in the article has your head spinning, then this rap video made by some smart students may help shed some more light on things while providing a beat you can dance to:
If the video still leaves you wanting for more info, there's this comic from PhD Comics that may do the trick.
For Hadron wanna-be geeks like yours truly, we can follow the progress of this historical scientific experiment on blogs like Cosmic Variance, maintained by some serious rocket scientists. There are some other sources to follow online as well this recent post explains:
"Of course we are not the only blog covering this. The US/LHC Blogs have lots of information, and Tommaso Dorigo offers some inside scoop. There is also main CERN page for the event, and one for press releases."
Full speed ahead, Scotty.
P.S. Google even has a special logo for this day: 
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