A Kent University professor has been monitoring today's switch on of the world’s biggest machine, the Large Hadron Collider.

At around 8.30am, physicists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based near Geneva, began attempting to create the conditions of the universe seconds after the big bang, and in turn, try and find out what lead to the universe we see today.

Professor of space science at Kent University Mark Burchell worked at the site on the Franco-Swiss border more than 10 years ago, just as this project was beginning.

Although he did not work on this particular assignment, he worked on particle accelerators, like the LHC, but on a much smaller scale.

Prof Burchell said: "It will take beams of protons and circulate them in rings, they go round and round and round.

"One beam is going one way and another beam is going the other way, and occasionally where the beams intercept it will be like two cars colliding on the motorway."

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• Audio: Prof Burchell speaks to kmfm about the Large Hadron Collider >>>

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The collision points are surrounded by giant detectors where thousands of physicists will measure the particle fragments to see whether a new particle was created.

There has been speculation that because this experiment is on such a large scale, it could turn the planet into a black hole, but Prof Buchell says we have nothing to worry about.

He said: "These sorts of interactions are occurring naturally in the universe almost continually, the difference will be that by building an accelerator we will be able to control what happens and where it is going to happen."

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Click here to see the Large Hadron Collider explained

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With this experiment estimated to have cost £4.4 billion, questions have been raised over whether we really need to know the universe began.

Prof Burchell said: "Why are certain heavy and certain things light?

"Why do they then stick together to form bigger particles and eventually make the atoms which make us. How did all that precede?

"To understand that requires us to understand the individual sub-particles, which is what this experiment is about.

"In the short term it won’t change the way we look at the world in general. In the longer term hopefully scientists will be able to understand the universe a bit better and manipulate it a bit better."

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Read Bob's Blog for Bob Mower's views on the big bang

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But do not expect any immediate results - due to the amount of data that will be collected during the experiment it could take up to a year for the first results to be analysed and released.

Large Hadron Collider facts:

• The circumference of the LHC accelerator is 26,659m

• It is about 100m underground

• There are 9300 magnets inside

• All the magnets will be cooled to -271C

• Particles will be crashed together at 99.99 per cent the speed of light

• Data recorded from each experiment will fill around 100,000 dual layer DVDs every year

SOURCE: CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research