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GENEVA (AP) — Scientists say the Large Hadron Collider may be on the verge of its first scientific breakthroughs.

They say the $10 billion atom smasher under the Swiss-French border appears to have recreated at a small level the matter that existed in the first moments of the universe.

A scientific paper published this week by the European Organization for Nuclear Research describes how high-energy proton collisions produced unusual readings that could replicate the "hot dense matter" that would have existed microseconds after the Big Bang

Raju Venugopalan, a senior scientist at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, said Wednesday that physicists "are very excited" by the European lab's results.