AN East Lancashire company played a major role in the development of the ‘Big Bang experiment’, it has been revealed.

Bosses at Hawk Electronics, based in Malt Street, Accrington, have spent the last 15 years developing electronic circuit boards and cables that form part of the Vertex Locator (Velo) machine.

Company boss Alicja Kay, 57, said she was immensely proud that the firm has played a key role in the “fascinating” experiment.

But she said she was shocked at the way the trials in Geneva, Switzerland, had captured the public’s imagination.

Mrs Kay, who lives in Hapton, said: “The electronic boards are highly complex and have taken many years of development.

“We were first contacted by Liverpool University around 15 years ago to manufacture the boards.

“When we started we had no idea how big the experiment would be but we are extremely proud to be a part of it.”

The company, which employs around 60 people, also manufactures electronic boards for the military and the London Underground.

The only point where the beams collide is inside the Velo sub-detector, part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The electronic boards produced by Hawk will analyse the particles produced.

The LHC, which took two decades to construct, is the largest particle accelerator the world has seen.

It is designed to smash protons — one of the building blocks of matter — into each other with energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before.

The LHC could help scientists explain mass, gravity, mysterious “dark matter” and why the universe looks the way it does.

Scientists will now spend years analysing the data produced in the experiment.