Updated 24 November 08:00  Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) began to run over the weekend after a year-long delay, but Monday was the real day of excitement at its home at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The LHC is designed to study the world’s smallest known particles, the building blocks of the universe. Two beams have been circulating in opposite directions since the 20 November startup, alternating, but today they began to circulate at the same time, crossing at two points.

The beams were tuned for collisions at four points, allowing proton-proton collisions for the first time. The Cern team thus began calibrating the beams, a paintstaking process in the world’s largest machine.

The next phase at the laboratory, which is the world’s leading centre for particle physics, involves increasing the beams’ intensity from their relatively slow injection phase and accelerating the beams.

Researchers at Cern said Monday that they can soon begin compiling collision data and by late December they expect to have “good quantities of collision data for the experiments’ calibrations.”

Cern control centre 23 November 2009

The packed-out Alice control room, at point 2, one of the crossing points, was jubilant late Monday when they detected collisions. “Cheers erupted with the first collisions,” said Alice spokesperson Jurgen Schukraft. “This is simply tremendous.”

Cern’s director general, Rolf Heuer, cautioned patience, though, pointing out that “we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.” The first high energy collisions are expected to take place in early 2010.

Background, GenevaLunch articles on Cern

Links to other sites: Nature, New Scientist, UPI

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