Officials at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) turned on their $8 billion, 14-years-in-the-making science experiment this morning, sending a beam of protons around the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) 17-mile loop. Then they did it again, this time in the opposite direction. You'll be pleased to know that the experiment -- conducted 300 feet below the ground near Geneva -- did not create a black hole.

Of course, as the New York Times put it, today's activities at CERN are the just the beginning of the main experiment: "If the new collider is a car, then what physicists did today was turn on an engine, that will now sit and warm up for a couple of months before anybody drives it anywhere."

"Drives" is an interesting euphemism for what the scientists intend to eventually do: accelerate the protons to energies of 7 trillion electron volts and smash them together in an attempt to recreate the conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

The LHC experiment has gained some unintended notoriety over the past six months due to fears by a small minority that such a collision could open up a black hole that instantly consumes the entire planet, and possibly much more. In March, two American scientists filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court alleging that CERN had not conducted a proper environmental impact statement as required under NEPA. The suit sought to stop the final phase of LHC construction, which obviously it did not.

But most leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking, say the experiment is perfectly safe, so we'll take their word for it. CERN spokesman James Gillies told the AP that the worst that would happen is that the fully powered-up beam of protons could go out of control, "which would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel."