The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest and most expensive physics experiment, took a momentous turn on Friday when scientists at the CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, successfully sent beams of protons clockwise around the 27-km magnetic racetrack underneath the France-Switzerland border.

With the experiment essentially aimed at smashing together sub-atomic particles, the collider was designed to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts apiece and smash them together in tiny fireballs, endeavoring to reproduce the conditions of the Big Bang and study them in depth.

The first-of-its-kind success, achieved at nearly 10 p. m. outside Geneva, came after the 15-year, $9-billion pursuit - to probe laws and forces that existed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old - faced earlier failure and was re-commenced.

The experiment was initially undertaken on September 10, 2008, with great flourish; but, nine days later, it suffered an electrical fault which caused the leakage ultra-cold liquid helium, thereby bringing about severe damage.

As a result of the electrical connection between a pair of the collider's giant superconducting electromagnets vaporizing, nearly $24 million were spent on repairs, over and above the $6-billion original cost of the experiment.

Saying that "It's great to see beam circulating in the LHC again," the CERN director, Rolf Heuer, added that if all goes well, the protons will start colliding at low energies in almost a week's time.