BATAVIA, Ill. — Science rode a beam of subatomic particles and a river of Champagne into the future on Wednesday.Anja Niedringhaus to the CERN laboratory near Geneva. After 14 years of labor, scientists activated their new particle collider.
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Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
Some scientists at the Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., showed up in pajamas on Wednesday for the activation of the collider near Geneva.
After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.

At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.

“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception in 1994. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.

An ocean away from Geneva, the new collider’s activation was watched with rueful excitement here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which has had the reigning particle collider.

Several dozen physicists, students and onlookers, and three local mayors gathered overnight to watch the dawn of a new high-energy physics. They applauded each milestone as the scientists methodically steered the protons on their course at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Many of them, including the lab’s director, Pier Oddone, were wearing pajamas or bathrobes or even nightcaps bearing Fermilab “pajama party” patches on them.

Outside, a half moon was hanging low in a cloudy sky, a reminder that the universe was beautiful and mysterious and that another small step into that mystery was about to be taken.

Dr. Oddone, who earlier in the day admitted it was a “bittersweet moment,” lauded the new machine as the result of “two and a half decades of dreams to open up this huge new territory in the exploration of the natural world.”

Roger Aymar, CERN’s director, called the new collider a “discovery machine.” The buzz was worldwide. On the blog “Cosmic Variance,” Gordon Kane of the <a title=”More articles about the University of Michigan.” called the new collider “a why machine.”

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