Large Hadron Collider

A teenage girl in India has reportedly killed herself out of fear the world was about to end because of the atom-smashing "Big Bang" experiment conducted in Europe,.

The 16-year old girl, from the state of Madhya Pradesh, died after drinking pesticide, The Daily Mail said.

Her father, identified on local television as Biharilal, said his daughter, Chayya, had killed herself after watching doomsday predictions about the Large Hadron Collider on Indian news programmes.

"In the past two days, Chayya had asked me and other relatives about the world coming to an end on September 10," Biharilal said.

"We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail."

As part of their experiments, scientists have now successfully fired protons in both directions around a 27-kilometre underground ring on the Swiss-French border.

They hope to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure.

But fears have been raised the experiment could create a black hole that would suck the Earth away, although the scientists involved insist the experiment is safe.

Fears about the experiment had spread rapidly through the media in deeply religious India, The Daily Mail said.

Thousands of people had rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savoured their favourite foods in anticipation of the world's end, the paper said.