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Computer screens at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) control centre of the CERN - Source: Reuters
Scientists have restarted a giant sub-atomic particle collider built to reproduce Big Bang conditions, according to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).
The world's biggest atom-smasher, called the Large Hadron Collider, was shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults.
A CERN spokesman James Gillies says the first tests of injecting sub-atomic particles began early on Saturday NZT.
He says the injections lasted a fraction of a second, enough for "a half or even a complete circuit" of the LHC built in a 27km-long tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
The problem in 2008 was a faulty splice in the super-conducting cable connecting two cooling magnets in the 27-km underground ring, which smashes particles at a temperature of just above absolute zero to recreate conditions believed to exist at the start of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
As the particles smash into each other at nearly the speed of light - once the collider is operating at full throttle, which will take several weeks - they will explode in a burst of energy.
Scientists will monitor that for new or previously unseen particles which they predict could help explain the nature of mass and the origins of the universe.
CERN says last year's accident never posed any danger.
The Geneva-based institution has had to rebuff suggestions that the experiment will create millions of black holes that would suck in the Earth.
