Question: How will the research of the scientists at CERN with the Large Hadron Colider expand our understanding of the universe?

Claire Lee answered on 24 Jun 2013:

Good question! Well, we’re basically trying to figure out how the universe works.

Even though we know a lot, there are lots of things we don’t know. We don’t know for sure how things get mass. We don’t know why we have a universe filled with matter – it should have all vaporised into light after the big bang! We don’t even know how gravity works, really. All the research we do is taking us steps in (what we hope is) the right direction to answering these questions.

By building massive detectors, and smashing things together, we can get an idea of what the universe is made of and how it works!