“What determines the size of objects that we see around us or indeed even the size of ourselves, and what determines the size of the atoms themselves?”

Cern is a place in Genva where scientists have spent the past 30 years building a massive 17 mile underground ring of magnets and special tubing. The idea simply is to force two very fast streams of lead ions (atoms with extra electrons) together at speed and see what happens. The LHC will collide lead ions to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang. The data obtained will allow physicists to study a state of matter known as quark ‑ gluon plasma, which is believed to have existed soon after the Big Bang. As the plasma cools it will model the behavior of the universe milliseconds after the big bang. Then we hope to see the “Higgs Boson” and gain some more understanding not only to why those extra chips make us fatter but why the molecules themselves have the property that we assign as “mass”

It is suggested that all particles had no mass just after the Big Bang. As the Universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, an invisible force field called the ‘Higgs field’ was formed together with the associated ‘Higgs boson’. Like a massive electric field across the universe The field prevails throughout the cosmos: any particles that interact with it are given a mass via the Higgs boson. The more they interact, the heavier they become, whereas particles that never interact are left with no mass at all i.e. mass moving at speed etc.. It is kinda like Star Wars idea of “feeling the force”. Well done to Yoda who may soon be proved right (as also would be Peter Boson) Mr Powell (Head of Physics)