Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cern’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will have its first synchronization run this weekend, 9-10 September, a key step in the process to get the world’s most powerful particle accelerator up and running. Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced late Thursday that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made 10 September. According to Cern, "The LHC  producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, it relies on technologies that would not have been possible 30 years ago. The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype."

Starting up the machine is a long process that starts that starts with cooling down each of the machine’s eight sectors. This is followed by the electrical testing of the 1600 superconducting magnets and their individual powering to nominal operating current. These steps are followed by the powering together of all the circuits of each sector, and then of the eight independent sectors in unison in order to operate as a single machine.

By the end of July, all eight sectors were at their operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-271°C). The synchronization phase scheduled for this weekend begins with synchronizing the LHC with the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator, which forms the last link in the LHC’s injector chain. Timing between the two machines has to be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond. This weekend’s work involves the clockwise-circulating LHC beam, with the second synchronization to follow in coming weeks. Cern notes that "Tests will continue into September to ensure that the entire machine is ready to accelerate and collide beams at an energy of 5 TeV per beam, the target energy for 2008. Force majeure notwithstanding, the LHC will see its first circulating beam on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV)."

Television coverage of the start-up will be made available through Eurovision..

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