Scientists and even non-scientists know things today that the great physicists of a century ago couldn't have imagined. For example physicists in those days believed that the smallest things in the universe, the foundation of all matter, were atoms, a word derived from a Greek word meaning "uncuttable. Nowadays, however, we are simply not sure what the smallest particle in the universe is Atoms are made of particles called protons neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons (the "hadrons" that give the collider its name) are made of even smaller particles named quarks and gluons, which have been detected experimental proof for in collider experiments; the existence of quarks came in 1968 and for gluons in 1979 To date, 57 particles have been found, challenging theoretical physicists to come up with a description of reality that includes them ll. American physicist Michael Peskin believes that the LHC will be a great help in finding even more particles. "It might turn out to be like the 1950s, when we were discovering many new particles and had no clue about how coherent picture." He adds they fit into "I hope it will turn out like that. This is what makes science fun." By creating hundreds of thousands of head- on particle collisions each second, physicists hope to reproduce the awesome energies and temperatures of the universe near the time beginning, the so-called of its theoretical Big Bang. Scientists hypothesize that the Big Bang, a massive explosion, resulted in our universe. Among questions scientists hope to learn more about is the riddie of dark matter, the invisible material thought to make up perhaps 80 percent of the universe. Scientists are also optimistic that experiments in the LHC will reveal an intriguing particle called the Higgs boson, which theory predicts exists but whose existence has never been confirmed in an experiment. The Higgs is thought to be responsible for giving all matter its mass.