A teenage girl agreed to have under-age sex because she wanted to lose her virginity before the Large Hadron Collider caused the end of the world, according to the Telegraph.

The girl, who is aged between 13 and 15, had heard rumours that particle accelerator under the Franco-Swiss border would bring about Armageddon when it was switched on last September.

At the time leading scientists including Prof Stephen Hawking were forced to deny claims that the £4.4bn accelerator would generate a black hole capable of swallowing up the earth.

In the event the collider kicked into life peacefully, although it has since been beset by technological problems. But police in Brisbane, Australia believe that the teenage girl was so scared by the doomsday speculation that she agreed to have under-age sex with a boy in their school lavatories.

Her fears came to light after their sex acts were filmed by another boy at the school, with the footage circulated among pupils via their mobile phones. Police have launched an investigation under child pornography laws, although The Courier-Mail newspaper reported that they did not expect to bring any charges.

Constructed by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider has been built at depths ranging from 170ft to 600ft near the institution’s headquarters in Geneva. The aim of the experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang – the birth of the universe – and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life. It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles.