They’ve said it before, and they’ll say it again: A powerful atom smasher set to fire up Wednesday will not destroy the universe. Scientists with knowledge of the machine — dubbed the “Large Hadron Collider,” or LHC — are growing weary of the hype. The LHC, a giant apparatus 330 feet below the ground of the France-Switzerland border, has taken its share of flak over the past months. The collider works by smashing tiny particles called “hadrons” together at higher speeds than ever before possible.
