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VIDEO: UK threatens Syria with sanctions

UK will push for international sanctions against Syria unless it ends its “brutal repression” of anti-government protesters.

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Ecuador declares volcano alert

The Tungurahua volcano spews ash and steam during an eruption on 25 April 2011

This is the first significant activity from the Tungurahua volcano this year

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Ecuador has declared an amber alert after the Tungurahua volcano started spewing ash again.

A plume more than 7km (4.3 miles) high could be seen emerging from the volcano in central Ecuador.

The authorities evacuated residents living near the volcano’s rim and ordered local schools to close.

The Tungurahua has erupted periodically over the past 12 years, but this is its first significant activity this year.

Monitors said they detected six eruptions, ranging from moderate to large.

“According to our observations, damages to crops, pastures and small effects to the health of people are already evident,” the Ecuadorean geophysics institute said.

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High fees ‘would deter students’

The government says graduates will not start repaying their loans until they are earning £21,000

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More than half of final-year students at top universities in England say they would not have enrolled if annual fees had been £9,000, a survey has found.

The poll questioned 12,658 finalists studying at 24 top English universities which are expected to charge the maximum £9,000 for courses from 2012.

Research firm High Fliers found former state school pupils were most put off.

The results come as ministers plan to increase fees from just over £3,000 to between £6,000 and £9,000 from 2012.

The government says higher fees are fair because graduates earn more over their lifetime than non-graduates.

The poll showed 33% would have been put off degree studies by fees of £6,000 per annum and 51% by the maximum £9,000 levy.

Students at the universities of Loughborough, Sheffield, Lancaster, Liverpool and Reading were the most concerned, with more than three-fifths at each saying they would not have embarked on a degree if they had had to pay the maximum fee.

But students at Oxford and Cambridge were the least concerned, 25% and 27% respectively saying they would be put off by the top fee level.

State school pupils were more likely to say they would not have gone into higher education if they had had to pay tuition fees of £9,000.

Some 59% of those who attended comprehensive schools and 51% who attended grammar schools, said they would have been put off, compared with 39% of those who were educated privately.

The survey suggests female undergraduates are more likely to have been turned off university by maximum fees than their male peers.

And those living in the north of England were most likely to be put off doing a degree by the increased costs.

Managing director of High Fliers Research, Martin Birchall said: “This highlights the invidious position that universities have been put in by the government’s decision to cut funding for undergraduate teaching from 2012 and replace it with substantially higher student tuition fees.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Students should not be worried about fees because the evidence shows that the generosity of grants and loans compensates for them.

“Our student loans system will be more generous. Students won’t start repaying their loans until their earnings reach £21,000, up from the £15,000 threshold for today’s graduates.”

But Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: “This is yet further proof, if any were needed, that trebling tuition fees will put a great many ambitious talented young people off going to university.

“Students understand the system that is being put into place and are still saying, in no uncertain terms, that graduating with upwards of £40,000 of debt is too much.

“What is particularly worrying is those that are most likely to be affected are from groups that are already under-represented in our universities or are studying in subject areas already under threat due to the targeting of government-funding cuts.

“The government appears to have a desire to cut student numbers by pricing some students out of the system. It is clear that this will hit those from poorer backgrounds the hardest.”

The students surveyed attended Newcastle, Durham, Lancaster, York, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Loughborough, Aston, Birmingham, Warwick, Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Bath, Reading, Exeter, Southampton, Imperial College, King’s College London, London School of Economics and University College London.

The interviews for the survey were carried out in March.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

UN team to probe abuses in Libya

A Libyan boy is treated after being wounded by shelling in Misrata - 25 April 2011

There are many reports Libyan forces have shelled the rebel-held city of Misrata indiscriminately

A UN team is due to arrive in Tripoli to investigate allegations of human rights violations in Libya since the start of the conflict in February.

The team was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council following the Libyan government’s crackdown on protesters.

The government has said it will co-operate with the inquiry.

The three investigators say they will look at all alleged abuses, including those the government says have been committed by rebels or Nato forces.

The original mandate – to examine human rights violations allegedly committed by the forces of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi – remains the priority, says the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva, where the UN Human Rights Council is based.

There have been reliable reports of enforced disappearances, torture and even killing of protesters, says our correspondent.

The UN human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, said in late February that what was happening in Libya “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

More recently, there have been reports that Col Gaddafi’s forces trying to retake Misrata from rebels are indiscriminately shelling the city.

On Tuesday, three people were reportedly killed as missiles slammed into the city’s port, a lifeline for those seeking to escape to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Misrata under siege

See the whole interactive map of Misrata

Misrata has been besieged by government forces for two months, leaving parts of the city with neither electricity nor water.

Continued sniper fire, street clashes and shelling have prevented people from venturing outside their homes to get food and medicine.

Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting and many more have been wounded. Ships have been ferrying the injured to hospitals in Benghazi and bringing in humanitarian aid.

Libya’s government denies it has been indiscriminately shelling civilian areas.

Misrata is the last major rebel-held city in western Libya and the fighting for it has been fierce.

The UN investigators are to present their findings to the Human Rights Council in June. But their work could be overtaken by other moves, says our Geneva correspondent.

The UN Security Council has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Libya on possible charges of war crimes.

Nato is enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians in Libya amid a two-month revolt inspired by other uprisings in the Arab world.

A recent Nato strike on Col Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli sparked angry criticism from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said the Western coalition had no mandate to kill the Libyan leader.

Misrata: Reasons for deadlockSize of city and rebels’ local knowledgeAbility of both sides to get resupplyLack of coherent military strategiesMisrata: City under siege

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates defended the strike, calling it a legitimate attack on a military command and control centre.

He spoke after a meeting in Washington with British Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who said Libya’s rebels had gained “momentum” on the battlefield and that Col Gaddafi’s forces were on the “back foot”.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Nato’s 1,500 strike sorties over Libya had “seriously degraded Gaddafi’s military assets and prevented widespread massacres planned by Gaddafi’s forces”.

“They remain unable to enter Benghazi and it is highly likely that without these efforts Misrata would have fallen, with terrible consequences for that city’s brave inhabitants.”

On Tuesday, the US eased oil sanctions against Libya.

The move allows rebels to sell oil within their control and US firms to engage in transactions involving oil and oil products, and natural gas, as long as the exports benefit the opposition Transitional National Council.

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Olympics tickets deadline expires

London 2012 tickets went on sale on 15 March

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Applications for tickets for the London 2012 Olympics have “hit the roof”, according to organisers.

The deadline to apply for the 6.6 million tickets on the London 2012 website is 2359 BST on 26 April.

London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton said the number of applicants had risen steadily until Friday before hitting a “really high level”.

Applications will be processed by June 2011 when those who have been successful will be notified.

Before tickets went on sale on 15 March more than 2.5 million people had signed up to the official website.

Prices range from £20 to £2,012 – the top price for the opening ceremony – and oversubscribed events will be decided by a random ballot.

Mr Deighton said: “Every day is different, but also in the last week we have been getting three or four times the applications above and beyond what was coming in for the previous five weeks – and the sky’s the limit based on the pattern that I am seeing at the moment.”

There are 650 sessions across 26 sports and 17 days to choose from and people will be limited to a maximum of 20 events each.

The most popular events, including the men’s 100m final, have a limit of four tickets per person.

Mr Deighton said orders had been “pretty well-spread” across the sports, adding: “I think that a lot of people are ordering quite a number of tickets. Families seem to be ordering so they can go together.”

Sport, news and more 2012 informationBBC London 2012

And he said he was confident the ticketing system would stand up to the pressure expected in the next few hours.

“The system has actually worked faultlessly and with a process of this scale and complexity that is extraordinary,” he said.

“Even though I am expecting we will have significant demand we are confident with the way the system is working and that it can support anything that the ticket-buying world can throw at us.”

Once the deadline for tickets passes the process of matching demand, and the different-priced tickets, with sessions available will start.

Applications for tickets for the Paralympic Games open on 9 September.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

NHS plans ‘may harm patient care’

Frontline care must be protected, say MPs

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The planned shake-up of the NHS in England that will put GPs in charge of buying in services could risk patient care, warns a group of influential MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee says pushing through the changes while seeking £20bn in efficiency savings may damage front-line services.

The concerns follow those of others, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s close adviser Norman Lamb.

The government insists the overhaul is essential to safeguard services.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The efficiency challenge and our reforms are inextricably linked.

“Our reforms help the NHS make savings, because getting rid of tiers of bureaucracy will mean an extra £1.7bn each year to reinvest in patient care.

“And if we don’t give doctors and nurses the power to make decisions for their patients, then quality of care will suffer.”

“The Department must have effective systems in place to deal with failure so that whatever happens, the interests of both patients and taxpayers are protected”

Margaret Hodge Committee chairman

Under the plans GPs will be handed control over much of the health budget and the health service will be opened up to greater competition from the private sector.

At the same time the government also expects all hospitals in England to become foundation trusts, free from central control.

And it wants to secure efficiency gains across the NHS of up to £20bn by the end of the financial year 2014-15 and to reduce administrative costs in non front-line organisations by 33% over the same period.

Ministers maintain this is achievable, but the Public Accounts Committee is less sure.

Its report warns that ministers have “no control” over many of the costs.

And if the department’s estimate of the one-off costs associated with reorganisation turns out to have been too low, it will make the challenge of achieving savings for re-investment even tougher, it says.

Committee chairman Margaret Hodge said: “The Department of Health acknowledged the risks associated with this radical shake-up of the NHS.

“Whilst the reforms could complement the imperative of achieving £20bn efficiency gains by 2014/15, the reorganisation might also distract those responsible for making the savings while safeguarding standards of patient care.”

She added: “We were also concerned that the Department has not yet developed a high quality risk management protocol for either the commissioning or providing bodies.

“The Department acknowledged that some health trusts and some GP practices had some way to go to achieve foundation trust status or become commissioning consortia.

“The Department must have effective systems in place to deal with failure so that whatever happens, the interests of both patients and taxpayers are protected.”

Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of Council at the British Medical Association, said: “The Public Accounts Committee is right to highlight the risks posed by such a massive restructuring at a time of financial crisis.

“However, it is not just the timing, but also the direction of travel of these reforms that will cause problems.

“We share the concerns of the PAC that the consequences of increasing competition in the NHS have not been fully addressed.

“‘Market failures’ in healthcare have far more serious consequences than in other industries – and may have little connection with quality of care, or even patient demand.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Test for ovarian cancer ‘earlier’

Electron micrograph of an ovarian cancer cell

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GPs should offer more blood tests to try to detect ovarian cancer earlier, according to new guidelines for the NHS.

Almost 7,000 UK women a year are diagnosed with the disease, but only about a third are still alive five years on.

NHS advisers want to see greater use of a blood test that measures a key protein, to improve early diagnosis.

Doctors and cancer charities have welcomed the guidelines.

They have been drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which makes recommendations on medicines and procedures in the NHS.

Key symptoms are bloating, lower abdominal pain, feeling full after eating only a small amount, and needing to urinate with increased frequency.

A member of the guideline group, Sean Duffy, from the Yorkshire Cancer Network, said: “The symptoms can be vague, but shouldn’t be ignored if they are persistent.

“By persistent, we mean them occurring more than 12 times a month.

‘I thought it was just part of ageing’

Linda Facey was 43 and on holiday with her husband and two children when she began feeling unwell.

Seven weeks later, she was struggling to get out of bed.

She had a swollen stomach and was diagnosed with stage-three ovarian cancer.

Since her diagnosis in 2001, Mrs Facey has had four courses of chemotherapy and also pelvic radiotherapy.

She still has check-ups every six months – and urges any woman with symptoms suggesting ovarian cancer to see their GP.

Mrs Facey, from Gosport in Hampshire, said: “My waistline was persistently bigger – even within a week.

“I thought it was just changes to my body as I got older.

“I’m involved with a support group in Portsmouth and I still regularly meet women who are diagnosed too late.”

“The vast majority of ovarian cancer cases are diagnosed at a late stage, so we hope to see improvements in survival as a result of these guidelines.

“Sometimes doctors tell women they have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) – but NICE has already produced guidelines to say this is unusual as a new diagnosis in women over 50.”

The test, which measures a protein called CA125, costs about £20.

NICE says more testing will not be more expensive for the NHS in the long run, because it will save some women from having inappropriate investigations.

The blood test detects cancer only about half of the time – but experts believe using it more often, as well as ultrasound scans where necessary, and encouraging women to be more aware of the symptoms, will improve the UK’s “disappointing” survival rate for ovarian cancer.

A consultant gynaecological oncologist, Mr Charles Redman, said: “This strategy won’t be the perfect answer, but we think it will make a measurable difference.

“Trying to encourage women who might have ovarian cancer to present earlier will undoubtedly give the NHS challenges and mean changes for hospital doctors like myself.

“But the current situation is very poor. Other countries do better than us.”

Dr Clare Gerada, of the Royal College of GPs, said: “This is not about increasing GPs’ workloads – it is about working as effectively as possible with the tools available to us, to achieve the best possible outcomes for women.”

Target Ovarian Cancer’s public affairs director, Frances Reid, said: “This guidance could save hundreds of lives.

“It is now imperative to include ovarian cancer in the Department of Health’s cancer awareness campaigns, so that women know to go and ask for these tests.”

Ovarian Cancer Action’s chief executive, Gilda Witte, said: “Significant progress has been made in improving survival figures for ovarian cancer over the last 10 years, but there is a long way to go in beating the disease.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Ivory Coast investigates Gbagbo

A child carries a bag as she walks past a burnt house in the town of Duekoue where a mass grave was found (17 April 2011)

The violence that broke out after the disputed elections was among the worst in a decade

Ivory Coast’s new president has said that an investigation has begun into alleged crimes committed by his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo.

Alassane Ouattara told state-controlled TV that Mr Gbagbo’s close associates were also under investigation.

Mr Gbagbo was arrested earlier this month, ending a five-month-long crisis following presidential elections.

He had refused to relinquish power even though Mr Ouattara was internationally regarded as the winner.

“Preliminary investigations are under way over the crimes and offences committed by Laurent Gbagbo and his associates,” government spokesman Patrick Achi said, according to Agence France Presse.

Violent conflict

Mr Gbagbo’s stubborn refusal to accept his defeat following the 28 November elections tippled the country into its most violent conflict in a decade. Thousands are believed to have been killed and wounded.

Ivorian turmoil28 Nov 2010: Incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and challenger Alassane Ouattara in election run-off2 Dec: Electoral commission announces that Ouattara won 54% of vote3 Dec: Constitutional Council declaring Gbagbo the winner; UN says Ouattara was victor30 Mar 2011: Pro-Ouattara forces enter the capital, Yamoussoukro4 Apr: UN launches air strikes on Gbagbo in main city, Abidjan5 Apr: Gbagbo said to be on verge of surrender but his forces later regain lost ground10 Apr: UN and French attacks on targets near Gbagbo’s residence in AbidjanOuattara’s political tightrope

Mr Gbagbo, his wife Simone and more than 120 people were arrested at the presidential residence in the main city Abidjan on 11 April.

The former president and his wife have been put under house arrest in separate towns in the north of the country. Half of those who were arrested alongside him have since been freed.

The government of Mr Ouattara still faces resistance from fighters loyal to the former president who have refused to disarm, although several generals and senior officers have pledged their allegiance to the country’s new leader.

On Tuesday, Gen Mathias Doue, a former chief of staff to the Armed Forces of Ivory Coast, became the latest to switch sides, according to the Associated Press.

The news agency reports that he was received by Mr Ouattara at the Golf Hotel where he has set up his government since the post-election crisis began.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Key UK GDP growth number awaited

Bad winter weather was blamed for the bulk of the UK economy’s contraction at the end of 2010

Key UK economic growth figures are published later that will show whether the economy has rebounded from the contraction at the end of last year or fallen into a double-dip recession.

The economy shrank by 0.5% in the final three months of last year due to heavy snow, taking most analysts by surprise.

The market expects GDP to have risen between January and March by slightly more than last quarter’s contraction.

The figure will help determine interest rates set by the Bank of England.

Without the impact of the snow at the end of last year, the Office for National Statistics said growth would have been flat in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The Bank will be watching the latest figures with interest. It has so far resisted calls to raise interest rates, despite the inflation rate being double its 2% target, largely on the basis that doing so would jeopardise the fragile economic recovery.

However, three of the Bank’s nine-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) have voted to raise rates for the past three months.

One of them, Andrew Sentance, warned on Tuesday that the Bank’s credibility was at stake if did not raise rates.

However, the fact that inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, fell to 4% this month from 4.4% in March, has relieved some of the pressure on the Bank.

Whereas many economists had expected the Bank to raise rates as early as May, the market now expects a move later in the summer.

A BBC poll of 22 economists published this week found that 14 expected rates to go up in August.

But much will depend on the first quarter GDP figures.

Strong growth will increase pressure on the MPC to raise rates, on the basis that the recovery is less fragile and inflation must be brought down.

Weak growth, or even further contraction, would make any early rise unthinkable, as it would put further pressure on already stretched households and businesses and so undermine future growth.

The government will also be watching the figures carefully. Weak growth would heighten criticism of its spending cuts, which are starting in earnest this month.

Some economists have criticised the speed and size of the cuts, which they say are putting the recovery at risk.

The government has argued the cuts are necessary to restore international investors’ confidence in the UK, and will lower the country’s borrowing costs, which means less money has to be wasted on debt repayments.

The coalition will see strong GDP growth, or at least stronger than expected, as vindication of its spending cuts.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Jonahan Amos By Jonathan Amos

The long journey: It has taken 17 years to get the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the launch pad

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It is the most complex space physics experiment ever built, and it will launch on shuttle Endeavour this week.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is also the most expensive, valued at $2bn (£1.2bn) – although no-one is really quite sure how much it has cost.

The 7-tonne machine will sit atop the International Space Station (ISS) and undertake a comprehensive survey of cosmic rays – the storm of high-energy particles (mostly protons and helium nuclei) that are accelerated in our direction from exploded stars, black holes and who knows what other exotic corners of the cosmos.

In analysing the nature of these particles, AMS promises remarkable new discoveries about how the Universe is put together.

There is a chance it could find anti-matter, the mirror of the material from which we are all made; and even identify the mysterious “dark matter” that scientists say makes a bigger contribution to the mass of the cosmos than all the stuff we see through telescopes.

But as exciting as these revelations would be, to Professor Sam Ting, the driving force behind the experiment, it is the knowledge AMS simply stumbles upon that could ultimately shake us.

“The issue of anti-matter and the origin of dark matter really probe the foundations of modern physics, but to my collaborators and me, the most exciting objective of AMS is to probe the unknown, to search for phenomena that exist in Nature but yet we have not the tools or the imagination to find them,” the Nobel Laureate said.

If some of what AMS does sounds similar to the activities of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Europe’s Cern laboratory, you would be right. The association is a rich one.

AMS was assembled and tested at Cern, and when it is working on the back of the ISS, it will talk to an operations control room at the laboratory.

But the details of the two great machines are really quite different, and AMS is doing something that is simply impossible on Earth.

In the LHC, a ring of super-cooled magnets are used to accelerate and corral particles that have energies of 7 trillion electron volts (TeV). The cosmos-accelerated particles AMS will catch in its detectors may have energies of 100 million TeV. The Earth’s atmosphere works to filter out such high-energy objects, so AMS has to go into space if it wants to study them directly.

AMS does carry a magnet – a very big one. But this is used just to bend the particles as they pass through the machine. The way they bend reveals their charge, a fundamental property that, together with information about the particles’ mass, velocity and energy, garnered from a slew of detectors, tells scientists precisely what they are dealing with.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, it will be just a boring proton that is observed. But there is a good chance that some colourful form of matter never witnessed before turns up in AMS.

This confidence may stem from a shuttle flight in 1998 when a much less sensitive test version of the machine (AMS-01) recorded one fascinating event in the course of 10-day journey into space.

The event was speculated to be the impact on the detectors of a so-called strangelet, a type matter composed of a different mix of elementary particles to that of normal matter.

“OK, it was a single event and a single event doesn’t mean much – we would have to gather far more statistics,” conceded Professor Martin Pohl of Geneva University, a team leader for one of the detector teams on the machine.

“Our only obligation is to make sure the instrument is correct – what you get is the truth”

Professor Sam Ting AMS project leader

“But if strangelets really exist, there will be no way to miss them on this next flight. Their source would be supernova explosions. It would revolutionise our understanding of the physics of what a supernova is,” he told BBC News.

One of the key quests for AMS, though, is to tie down the thorny issue of anti-matter.

Theory holds that for each basic particle of matter, there exists an anti-particle with the same mass but the opposite electric charge. For example, the negatively charged electron has a positively charged anti-particle called the positron.

Physicists believe the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, and yet when we look around our galaxy and beyond, all we seem to see is normal matter. Where has the anti-matter gone?

This asymmetry sits uncomfortably with some other experimental observations, and so establishing whether or not anti-matter still exists in the Universe is really quite a pressing question for today’s physicists.

Professor Ting says that detecting just one anti-helium nucleus, for example, would provide good evidence for the existence of a large amount of anti-matter somewhere in the Universe.

“The reason we have designed this experiment with such a large size, with so many layers of repetitive precision detectors, is to search for the existence of anti-matter to the age of the observable Universe – for anti-helium, anti-carbon; and we can distinguish these particles from billions of ordinary particles,” the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researcher explained.

“This is not a trivial job. In a city like Houston (Texas) during the rainy season, you have about 10 billion raindrops a second. If you want to find one that is of a different colour, it is somewhat difficult. This illustrates the precision on AMS.”

The AMS will sit on the station’s truss, or backbone, slightly tilted to look past the giant solar wings

Although it is riding into orbit on the US space agency’s Endeavour shuttle and being hosted at the ISS, the machine is not actually a Nasa project. The agency is really just a facilitator.

The main sponsor is the US Department of Energy. MIT has the science lead and heads a collaboration that comprises some 600 researchers at 60 institutions across 16 nations.

That AMS has even arrived at the launch pad is remarkable in itself given the history of the project. It has been near to cancellation on a few occasions, and after the Columbia shuttle accident was even dropped from the ISS assembly plan altogether.

But the commitment of the team and the financial backing of the US Congress, which mandated Nasa to find a shuttle to fly AMS, have ensured the “LHC in space” will get to do its science.

This is likely to begin within minutes of the machine being connected to the power supply of the orbiting platform.

It will sit at one of six fixed-payload attach-points, tilted slightly so that it can have a view of the cosmos unobstructed by the station’s giant solar wings.

“We’ll be gathering data at seven gigabits per second,” explained Trent Martin, the Nasa project manager appointed to advise the collaboration.

“We can’t send that huge amount of data down through the space station data systems – it’s just too much. So the onboard computers actually go through a process of condensing that data down to just the data we’re truly interested in, compressing it as much as possible. We’ll be sending down data on average at about six megabits per second, constantly for the whole time that AMS is on.”

There will be no rush to announcement, warns Professor Ting. The AMS experiment relies on good statistics so the collaboration will want to run it for a good length of time before they start making assessments about the presence or not of anti-matter, and the like.

And if one science team thinks it has a eureka moment, the finding will be assessed first by another, independent team – a practice well established at the LHC.

“Given the enormous difficulty we have had in building this experiment, I think in the next 10 to 20 years nobody will be foolish enough to repeat this,” the professor joked; and then in more serious tone: “It is very important we do it correctly, because otherwise it is certainly going to mislead the direction of science. Our only obligation is to make sure the instrument is correct – what you get is the truth.”

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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.