The world’s largest atom smasher has smashed particles together at the highest energy achieved in a laboratory, a spokeswoman has confirmed.

The Large Hadron Collider recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons on Tuesday evening, as it underwent test runs in preparation for full-scale operations next year.

More than 10 billion protons per bunch collided at a total energy of 2.36 trillion electron volts (TeV) per collision.

This image provided by CERN shows particle tracks as protons collided in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter

‘This is the breakthrough moment we have all been waiting for,’ said Rob McPherson from the University of Victoria and one of the Canadian scientists who helped design and build the machine.

‘The LHC was conceived of more than two decades ago, and today’s success represents the start of a new era in our understanding of matter and the universe.’

Physicists hope to recreate conditions that existed shortly after the Universe was created at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland.

They think the high-energy collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and exactly how the Universe came into being.

Christine Sutton from CERN said collisions were produced by two beams of circulating particles traveling in near the speed of light in opposite directions at 1.18 trillion electron volts.

The Atlas ‘experiment,’ one of four major detectors in cathedral-sized rooms in the collider’s underground tunnel at Geneva, had part of its equipment turned on so it could study the subatomic debris that came flying out.

‘They recorded a handful of collisions, and one of them looks quite nice, so it’s on their website,’ Ms Sutton said.

Atlas will be looking for the elusive Higgs boson. This is only particle predicted by the standard model of physics that remains undetected.

Scientists believe every particle in the universe gets its mass by interacting with a field created by Higgs Bosons. Should these be discovered the model could unify all forces except gravity.

Ms Sutton said the collisions occurred when the machine was ramped up briefly to 1.18 TeV. That same level set a world record for proton acceleration in November, when Geneva’s particle beams traveled with 20 per cent more power than Fermilab near Chicago, which previously held the record.

The operators plan many more collisions at lower energies so the experiments can calibrate their equipment and prepare for more advances ahead.

CERN then plans more collisions at 1.18 TeV to give all experiments the opportunity to record data at that level, but new scientific discoveries are not expected before next year when the beams are ramped up still higher, to 3.5 TeV.

That will be 3.5 times more energy that has been reached at Fermilab, previously the most powerful collider.

These developments come just three weeks after the LHC restart following months of delays.