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Scientists are preparing to view the beginnings of the universe and study some of the most complicated questions of physics with the powering up of the largest particle accelerator ever built.

A view of the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel under Geneva

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is 12 stories high and cost £5b. It is buried more than 300ft under the Alpine foothills in a 17mile tunnel along the Swiss-French border.

When the giant machine gets going, the LHC will blast protons - one of the building blocks of atoms - at a velocity just shy of the speed of light, generating temperatures of more than a trillion degrees centigrade.

Each proton beam will pack as much energy as a Eurostar train travelling at 150 kilometres per hour.

In layman's terms, the LHC will take protons and smash them together at high speeds.

The resulting collisions will hopefully replicate conditions found in the moments following the Big Bang - or the beginning of the universe - and scientists will study the fallout.

And why would they want to do this, you may ask?

Scientists want to explore answers to such questions as: Why does the universe look the way it does? Does another dimension, or dimensions, exist? How do particles acquire mass and therefore, gravity?

Particle physicist Dr Brian Cox, from the University of Manchester - who in the 1990s played the keyboard in the chart-topping band D:Ream - will be one of the scientists eagerly studying the results.

"The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest scientific project since the Apollo astronauts went to the moon, and that's no exaggeration," he said.

"It is the most complex machine ever built, and it's going to take us to a place we've never been before.

"The whole thing is incredibly exciting and incredibly difficult."

But turning the LHC on is no small feat.

Atoms are made up of a nucleus, or centre, made up of protons and neutrons. Hovering around the nucleus in an orbit-like relationship are electrons.

So in the first steps, atoms of hydrogen will be ripped apart and its protons feed into a series of smaller accelerators to build up their speed.

The move from the final accelerator to the LHC has to be perfectly timed to ensure stability. Once completed, a second beam running in the opposite direction will be introduced and the energy level boosted.

The first particle collisions are expected to take place within a few weeks.

MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) - A prehistoric crater left by an asteroid collision in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula could yield clues about what Mars was like billions of years ago, a NASA scientist says.

NASA planetary geologist Adriana Ocampo is digging up rocks buried deep under southeastern Mexico for hints about what impact craters can reveal about planet formation, and says her work could shed light on a giant crater on the surface of Mars.

Astronomers have been puzzled for decades about a huge dent on the surface of Mars -- the largest known crater in the solar system -- and new evidence last month suggests it was caused by the impact of an asteroid the size of the moon.

The Mexican crater, known as Chicxulub, was created when an asteroid that smacked into Earth 65 million years ago in a catastrophe that wiped out around half the planet's species and was maybe responsible for the dinosaurs becoming extinct.

Studying the debris spewed by the collision may answer questions about radical changes in atmosphere that can result from massive asteroid hits, Ocampo, a Colombian based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Reuters. She has been studying the Yucatan crater for a decade.

"It's a natural laboratory because of its similarities to what we can find on other planets like Mars where humans can't go," Ocampo said of Mexico's smaller crater.

The crater on Mars, measuring 5,300 miles across, is so big that it has left half the planet at a lower elevation.

Information from Chicxulub could also give clues about whether or not there was water on the surface of Mars long after the planet was dented by the massive asteroid hit.

Scientists have detected frozen water on the surface of the red planet. Martian seas could have disappeared when the planet was bombarded by smaller meteors that changed its atmosphere and dried it out, Ocampo said

She is looking for similarities between the Yucatan crater -- formed when southern Mexico was under the sea -- and smaller craters on Mars to see if she can detect similar patterns formed by water.

If you visit the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, you can still see the infamous "Monkey from Mars," a hoax that spurred a case of UFO fever back in 1953. That was the year that three guys -- two barbers and a butcher -- took a dead monkey, chopped off its tail, removed its hair and pour green coloring over the whole mess.

They left the poor dead beast in the road, the police took a report and soon the Air Force was looking into the story. Eventually, GBI experts got to examine the corpse. Snip:

"If it came from Mars, they have monkeys on Mars," Hines was quoted as saying in an article at the time by The Associated Press that is set beside the monkey in the appointment-only museum.

Where the men got the monkey is not clear. Watters, Wilson and Payne eventually admitted to the hoax and Watters paid a $40 fine for obstructing a highway.

When the Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., hosted a book signing in 2005 to promote a new local author, Stephenie Meyer, the response for a first-time novelist was typically lukewarm.

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Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

Sydney Noel, 13, left, of Seattle was among the crowd at a Borders bookstore in Manhattan.

“Maybe 50 people showed up,” recalled Cindy Dach, the store’s general manager. “And I’m pretty sure most of them were her friends and family.”

Three years later, “Breaking Dawn,” Ms. Meyer’s fourth and final book in her Twilight vampire-romance series (which began with the best-selling novel “Twilight”) was unveiled on Friday night with thousands of parties across the country to mark its officially going on sale at 12:01 a.m.

It was released amid confident predictions from bookstores that it would be the industry’s blockbuster of 2008.

Sydney Noel, 13, who had won a nationwide sweepstakes to fly to New York, have a private half-hour meeting with Ms. Meyer and then be handed the first copy to go on sale at midnight, could not believe her luck. “It means a lot to a Twilight fan,” said Sydney, a Seattle eighth grader. “I never thought anybody ever won these things. To get the first book — it’s amazing.”

“This is certainly going to be the biggest book of the year, without a doubt,” said Diane Mangan, the director of the children’s department for Borders Group.

Barnes & Noble planned to hold vampire-theme parties in more than 600 of its stores on Friday night, and invited readers to arrive in costume, socialize and play Twilight trivia. Borders Group was expecting more than 100,000 fans at 900 Twilight-theme parties at its Waldenbooks and Borders stores.

Katie Herzer, 14, showed up at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, a couple of hours before the books were to go on sale. “We got really sad when Harry Potter was over,” she said. “It’s great to find a new series we can read and maybe grow old with.”

Wordsmiths had been decked out to resemble a vampire prom, with red-and-black balloons and a photo area decorated with bleak black crepe. Some 175 people had R.S.V.P.’d to attend the store’s party and were told to dress in red and black. Many wore buttons reading “I Was Bitten by Breaking Dawn.” A goth band was to play vampire tunes.

In New York, several hundred people, most of them teenage girls, were spread around two floors of the Borders book store near Madison Square Garden. Three makeup artists were decorating faces — white makeup with red lipstick, fake tattoos and gruesome red scratch marks (“Everyone deserves to look like a vampire,” said Grace Quinones, 29, one of the volunteer artists) — while a fortune teller sat at a table in the window. There was a fashion show and a trivia contest. Upstairs, a heated debate was under way about which boy the series’ heroine should end up with, Edward the vampire or Jacob the werewolf.

“There’s a lot of conflict between the characters,” said Dan Dupuis, 27, of Fall River, Mass., his face white, his lips red. “It really draws you in.” He paused before adding, “I’m an Edward fan.”

His wife, Jessica Dupuis, 25, also in full vampire makeup, piped up happily, “I’m a Jacob fan.”

Mr. Dupuis noted: “That starts some fights at home.”

Both chain stores and independent booksellers said they were hoping to tap into the intense devotion, unseen since last July, when the final installment in the Harry Potter series sent readers to midnight parties in droves.

In interviews Ms. Meyer, 34, has resisted comparisons to J. K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series has 140 million copies in print in the United States, according to its publisher.

“It’s a completely different story line and a completely different fan base,” said Kim Brown, the vice president for specialty books at Barnes & Noble. “But what it does have in common is that it’s all based on word of mouth.”

While the Harry Potter series was geared more toward middle-school children, Twilight is aimed at high school girls.

The Twilight series tells the story of Bella, an innocently angst-ridden teenage girl who must choose between her two suitors.

Beyond their fan base of teenage girls, and a handful of boys, the books have also been embraced by conservative-minded women in their 20s and 30s who praise the squeaky-clean morals of the books’ teenage heroine. (She and Edward kiss now and then, but that’s about it, and the vampires drink animal blood rather than human blood.)

“It’s sensual without being erotic or explicit,” said Ms. Mangan of Borders. “Moms and daughters can read it and have conversations about abstinence.”

Ms. Meyer is a graduate of Brigham Young University who lives outside Phoenix with her husband and three young sons. She chafes at constant mentions of her Mormon religion in the press. (“You didn’t hear people saying, ‘Jon Stewart, Jewish writer,’ when his book came out,” she told USA Today.)

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Ms. Meyer’s publisher and a division of Hachette Book Group, has printed 3.2 million copies, the largest first printing in the publisher’s history. The first novel, “Twilight,” has spent 49 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and will be released as a film in December.

Yet despite Ms. Meyer’s enormous following and her perch on the best-seller lists, she is far from a household name.

That includes close to home, said Ms. Dach of the Changing Hands bookstore, which planned its own midnight party, complete with two rock bands and a Red Cross bloodmobile.

“Even in Arizona,” Ms. Dach said, “there are people who are like, ‘Who? What?’ ”

At Wordsmiths, Hannah Thrasher, 14, clutched the precious copy she’d bought just after midnight after driving 90 minutes with her mother from their home in Gilmer County, Ga. “I was planning on reading it all through the night,” she said. “But my mom says I have to go to sleep.”