I've been following the progress of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for years now. After many delays, and a few expensive accidents, they finally got it working. Today, for the first time, scientists have managed to collide protons at nearly the speed of light. The energy produced was astronomically high, considering the small amount of mass involved. Both streams combined issued a staggering 7 trillion electron volts of pure energy. Consider the fact that one molecule of uranium produces 1 million electron volts, and you can do the math. This process yields 7 million times more energy than our most potent energy source to date.
Energy, though, is not the primary focus of the project. The research is an attempt to study the smallest particles in the universe, the building blocks of protons, neutrons, and electrons, several forms existing only on paper so far. It is also hoped that the project will give us some insight into the origins of the universe, the mechanics that caused it to be, and processes now only vague shadows and science fiction. Time traveling, faster than light travel, wormholes, and dark matter are some of the mysteries hopeful scientists will try to bring to light.
Reading through scores of interviews with jubilant scientists and researchers, one commonality rang throughout. Comments like "Now we can see what it was like at the Big Bang!"
"These high energies mimic those which occurred at the Big Bang, the birth of the universe, so these experiments inform our understanding of the nature of the cosmos."
"The LHC aims to explore the nature of the universe just moments after the Big Bang and will increase our understanding of how it was created, and what it is made of and how it will evolve"
It seems to me that they just spent 10 billion dollars to support a hypothesis, rather than going about their research with an unprejudiced eye. They've already concluded how the universe was formed, and are now trying to get data to support their hypothesis. Haven't we been through all that already?