(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Scientists in Europe have successfully restarted the Large Hadron Collider - the world's largest particle collider.
They hope it'll allow them gain new insights into the so-called 'dark universe' which they believe lies beyond the visible one.
As Santilla Chingaipe reports, it's hoped they can also unlock the origins of the universe.
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The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful atom-smasher ever built, which analyses the universe's tiniest particles.
It was built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, between1998 and 2008.
It consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.
Inside the accelerator, two high energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light in opposite directions before they are made to collide.
When they collide, they recreate particles that existed during the Big Bang that brought the universe into being 13.8 billion years ago.
Two years ago, the Large Hadron Collider astounded the science world with the discovery of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle that gives other particles mass.
Engineer In Charge of the collider team, Laurette Ponce, says particle beams have successfully pushed their way around the collider in both directions after a two-year shutdown for maintenance.
"Now we have just managed to do the first turn with the anti-clockwise beam, so beam 2. We have been striding the beam all along the ring and we managed to keep it for 25 turns already without the RF capture, so this is already a big success."
The "RF capture" Ms Ponce refers to is the synchronisation of the collider's accelerating system.
The head of the beams department, Paul Collier, says they are yet to try another trajectory.
"What next? We have to continue to correct a little bit the trajectory to make the beam do now multiple turns. Then we can start capturing with the RF system. But in the meantime, we will try the other beam, the other direction, and try to get that to the same stage."
Scientists say it will be two months before particle collisions begin.
And they say it will be at least another year before any results can be expected.
But once those experiments begin they hope it will reveal the secrets of the universe.
They have their sights set on what they call 'Dark Matter'.
Simply put, it's the invisible, undetectable material that makes up most - some scientists say 84 per cent, some 96 per cent - of matter in the universe.
They say 'Dark Matter' binds galaxies together - but we know very little about it.
Professor Tara Shears, from the University of Liverpool, has told the BBC it could open up a new era in physics.
"The sorts of questions that we're trying to tackle are really really big ones. What dark matter is made of, for example, which forms far more of the universe than the stuff you can see around us. It's to do with how the universe evolved, really deep questions that don't yet have any really firm grasp on where we need to go to find an answer. We are going to learn far more about the universe."
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