THE WORLD was not sucked into a voracious black hole yesterday after the boffins running the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switched the beast back on again.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) started sending low energy beams of protons in both directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel that houses the LHC under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

The giant particle smasher was finally turned on again after two attempts by future scientist to break the collider failed. The last attempt involved French birds dropping bread into the works.

After a cautious trial period, CERN plans to ramp up the energy of the beams to unprecedented levels and start record-setting collisions of protons by late March.

The next stage is to up the power and shatter subatomic particles to reveal still smaller fragments and forces than previously achieved with any collider.

Of course that is assuming someone does not nick the God particle, keep the antimatter in a thin glass vial protected by a battery and take it to the Vatican in a cunning plot to get an Irishman elected to the papacy.

Or perhaps that's in the alternate universe the world didn't fall into when they switched on the LHC again. But we have the impression that the fantasy is a little more interesting than the reality of this massive scientific experiment at the moment. µ