OXFORDSHIRE scientists have been celebrating playing their part in the world’s largest experiment.

The £6.bn Large Hadron Collider successfully smashed two beams of tiny particles into each other today at close to the speed of light in an underground tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland.

The experiment was designed to recreate a similar situation to the beginning of the universe.

Particle physicists at Harwell’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) have been involved in the project for a decade, and gathered to watch a live video-feed of the switch-on of the machine.

At 12.06pm, seven trillion volts of electricity fired two beams of proton particles into each other at 99 per cent of the speed of light. RAL’s head of particle physics Prof Norman McCubbin said: “We have been trying to control the equivalent of two human hairs, each travelling as near as possible to the speed of light, and get them to hit each other. “This really does open up possibilities of new discoveries.”

Meanwhile, more Oxfordshire scientists received good news as the Government allocated £97.4m to the Diamond Light Source project, based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

The facility, which is shaped like a doughnut and employs 400 people, generates brilliant beams of light to examine the properties of materials at an atomic and molecular level.