After over a year of repair works the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may be restarted within the next few days. Scientists will gently prod the giant particle collider back into action, starting by circulating beams of protons at low energies and generating low energy collisions, before slowly firing it up to its full power. It is hoped that eventually the high energy collisions will generate conditions similar to those right after the Big Bang and shed light on some of the biggest mysteries of the Universe.

To remind yourself of what the LHC is all about, read the Plus articles:

• The LHC for dummies
• Particle hunting at the LHC
• The physics of elementary particles
• The search for Higgs

Or, for a quick fix, here's the LHC rap: