The global community is ablaze with anticipation, curiosity, skepticism and in some circles fear. Last minute preparations are being made for Wednesday’s landmark firing of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The next great leap in particle physics is upon us and the whole world is watching.

In two days time the culmination of decades of preparation, planning and research will commence when scientists bombard two protons at 99.9999% the speed of light.  If conditions permit, the LHC, the largest and most sophisticated particle accelerator in the world will replicate the conditions experienced one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. What this will yield is pure conjecture but the excitement is palpable.

Hope runs deep in the scientific community that data will be observed revealing physical anomalies that could have only taken place in the unfathomably infantile Universe.  Miniature black holes, unobserved dimensions, perhaps even the cornerstone of the Standard Model of Physics, the elusive Higgs boson, better known as the “God Particle” will be revealed.  Among other revelations, physicists hold hope that the data collected will demonstrate how particles obtained mass in the earliest vestiges of the Universe.

Perhaps more striking then the immediate scientific impact, is the subtle notion that science is more intrigued by what it cannot expect.  There is no certainty of the outcome of such an experiment.  Nor is there certainty of its safety.  There are some very smart people who question the necessity of such an experiment citing the oft chance of apocalyptic doom.  While this may be easy to scoff at, the idea of creating black holes and big bangs is hardly trivial - especially when there is an inherent uncertainty involved. Nevertheless, we should must push forward.

Science has become so powerful, so great, that we can play curious creator with the fundamental building blocks that architect universes.  The notion of such power and intrigue leaves no doubt why we push the envelope into the unknown.  We search for the answer, the very essence of creation - our creation.

Strangely enough, particle physicists and the scientific community as a whole stood eagerly at this very precipice some fourteen billion years ago, wondering what kind of particles they just might see. History too, you see, is governed by the very laws of physics and always has a way of repeating itself.