LONDON, England – When scientists flip the switch Wednesday on the world's biggest, and most expensive experiment ever, they'll be hoping to discover the unsolved mysteries of the universe.

We'll just be hoping they're not flipping the off-switch on life as we know it.

So what is the point of this $6 billion project? And are we all going to DIE?

Well, when you meet these guys at CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, they sort of describe themselves as the 21st century's intrepid explorers.

They say that trying to understand what most of us find incomprehensible is the challenge that has faced scientists for centuries.

Recreating the Big Bang, they say, is a huge step forward in understanding the microscopic structure of nature.

What they have learnt from science over the last 100 years is that two of the great challenges of understanding are: that of the cosmos (very big) and atoms (very small).

And by managing to simulate in the accelerators the conditions that were likely around soon after the Big Bang will help them get some clues about what the early universe was all about.

And they say there is absolutely no measurable risk that this experiment with create a gaping big black hole... or even a microscopic one.

And even if they did, they say, these little black holes would evaporate away quickly and would be too small to suck in any matter.

Hmmm. That hasn't stopped the skeptics filing suits in the U.S. District Courts in Hawaii and the European Court of Human Rights to stop it.

They haven't managed it - not yet at least - but there are still a few hours to go before the experiment is switched on at a site deep underground and spread across the on French-Swiss border.

Ok, let's get really basic here. What does this all really mean to us mere mortals?

Well, there are always new questions. And there will always be scientists looking for answers. Answers to conundrums that will create something new, life changing and important.

This might not mean a lot to the average Joe Blogs (or Blogger), but what about this.

Remember Tim Berners Lee – the man who invented the World Wide Web. He was working in a physics laboratory at CERN way back when. Because people at CERN came from universities all over the world, they brought with them all types of computers. Not just Unix, Mac and PC: there were all kinds of big mainframe computer and medium sized computers running all sorts of software.

And he thought: Can't we convert every information system so that it looks like part of some imaginary information system which everyone can read? And that became the WWW.

So I guess there is an argument to suggest that 10,000 scientists from more than 20 countries over two decades working together is probably a pretty good idea. And on the off chance they come up with something cool - the price tag of nearly $6 billion is probably quite cheap.

Convinced? No, nor am I! But then I'm a bit of a coward so I'm choosing carefully who I'm with at 1230CET Wednesday!