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It was with great fanfare that the Large Hadron Collider first fired up at CERN in Switzerland back in September of 2008. Nine days after coming online, the $10 billion project had to be taken offline, due to some bad soldering, of all things. The magnets, pictured here courtesy of gamsiz via Wikipedia, which direct the proton beams were severely damaged. Well, a little more than a year (and an additional $40 million) later, the LHC is back….big-time. The supercollider provided a super collision today: 7 trillion electron volts worth. Two proton beams had been flying at each other for ten days, in a 17 mile tunnel 300 feet under the ground. At 1:06PM local time, they collided at nearly the speed of light, creating microscopic bursts of energy that scientists say mimicked the conditions at the beginning of the universe. “We’re within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang,” CERN spokesman James Gillies said. In the podcast, you’ll hear from Gillies and others at CERN, and get their reaction to the days events. Here are some useful links:

• BBC Video: CERN LHC sees high energy success
• BBC: LHC explained (highly recommended)
• CERN: The LHC

We’ve also got an update on Google move to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong, and gauge Chinese response. There seemed to be some confusion today, as mainland users struggled to access the Hong-Kong site at all. There were some initial reports that China was blocking access entirely, although other reports put it down to a technical fault on Google’s part.

Afghanistan figures into this week’s podcast too. Apparently, explosive growth in the use of the Internet there is causing the Afghan government to consider some censorship moves of its own. We check in with a BBC correspondent on the ground in Kabul.

And we end this week with a piece on I’m Halal, which bills itself as the world’s first halal search engine! Check it out for yourself, although it appears that the English version is in private beta.

Oh, and here’s where you go to check out The World Science Podcast!

Since you asked, that clip at the start of this episode of WTP comes courtesy of the most reviled, and loved, episode I think I ever did. It’s from back in 2006, and yes…that’s Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. You can hear the entire episode here.

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