The God Particle

September 2007 It's one of the great unanswered questions of science. What gives matter its mass? By generating conditions present moments after the big bang, scientists hope to locate the elusive 'God Particle'. "This is going to take us to the next layer of understanding", enthuses Prof Geoff Taylor. The Hadron Collider at CERN, due to be switched on next year, will shoot beams of energy around a 27 km loop, smashing them into each other at the speed of light. It's all in the hope of detecting the Higgs Boson, or 'God' particle, thought to give matter its mass. CERN scientists will also create mini black holes and search for dark matter. As Taylor states: "We are on the verge of discovering how our universe evolved from the first few fractions of a second." Produced by SBS/Dateline Distributed by Journeyman Pictures