Large Hadron Collider's first run a success!

For those who didn't know, about 7:30am GMT (12:30am PST), the Large Hadron Collider shot its first beam. And, well, they detected it at the other end, which means everything worked as planned. Yay! Now we just wait patiently for October for their first actual collisions to take place.

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Told you the world wouldn't end

First beam in the LHC - accelerating science

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN1 was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.

“It’s a fantastic moment,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

Starting up a major new particle accelerator takes much more than flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony, timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, and beams finer than a human hair have to be brought into head-on collision. Today’s success puts a tick next to the first of those steps, and over the next few weeks, as the LHC’s operators gain experience and confidence with the new machine, the machine’s acceleration systems will be brought into play, and the beams will be brought into collision to allow the research programme to begin.

Once colliding beams have been established, there will be a period of measurement and calibration for the LHC’s four major experiments, and new results could start to appear in around a year. Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton's description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain the mechanism that generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer. LHC experiments will also try to probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 5% of what must exist, while about a quarter is believed to be dark matter. They will investigate the reason for nature's preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the very beginning of time.

“The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, “its research programme has the potential to change our view of the Universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that’s as old as mankind itself.”

Tributes have been coming in from laboratories around the world that have contributed to today’s success.

“The completion of the LHC marks the start of a revolution in particle physics,” said Pier Oddone, Director of the US Fermilab. “We commend CERN and its member countries for creating the foundation for many nations to come together in this magnificent enterprise. We appreciate the support that DOE and NSF have provided throughout the LHC's construction. We in the US are proud to have contributed to the accelerator and detectors at the LHC, together with thousands of colleagues around the world with whom we share this quest.”

“I congratulate you on the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider,” said Atsuto Suzuki, Director of Japan’s KEK laboratory, “This is a historical moment.”

“It has been a fascinating and rewarding experience for us,” said Vinod C. Sahni, Director of India’s Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, “I extend our best wishes to CERN for a productive run with the LHC machine in the years to come.”

“As some might say: ‘One short trip for a proton, but one giant leap for mankind!’ TRIUMF, and indeed all of Canada, is delighted to bear witness to this amazing feat,” said Nigel S. Lockyer, Director of Canada’s TRIUMF laboratory. “Everyone has been involved but CERN is to be especially congratulated for bringing the world together to embark on such an incredible adventure.”

In a visit to CERN shortly before the LHC’s start-up United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said: “I am very honored to visit CERN, an invaluable scientific institution and a shining example what international community can achieve through joint efforts and contribution. I convey my deepest admiration to all the scientists and wish them all the success for their research for peaceful development of scientific progress.”

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressRele...8.08E.html

And look, we are all still alive!

i laughed so hard at those stupid panicky kids in my school right after i siad to them "told you".

now i just need to wait to october so i could do it again....
i hope.

nahhh, nothing will happen. DD

Alon, just remember, if you're wrong, they can't taunt you about it ;P

They put up a press release on the CERN website, so I've put that in the original post.


http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroye...ldyet.com/

The world is supposed to end oct 21st according to them. I believe (not really) the mayans were right and dec 17 2012 will be the last day.

Wait...isn't there no harm in this, but actually the world might end when the atoms crash?

No, the world will not end when the atoms crash.

No, the world will not end when the atoms crash.

I said might

I don't believe it, either.

Why are they doing this?
What if the world really does end?!

Why are they doing this?
What if the world really does end?!

They're doing this because it'll help answer a lot of questions to do with physics. It's a very important experiment. And stop worrying about the world ending. You're more likely to be killing by a meteor suddenly hitting the earth than the LHC. There's no real risk, or they wouldn't do this.

I died a little inside when they used a human hair as the comparative measure for the diameter of the beams.

Alon, just remember, if you're wrong, they can't taunt you about it ;P

yeah, that's the best part about it.

ahoboandahal, you mean dec 21, 2012 right?

Wait...isn't there no harm in this, but actually the world might end when the atoms crash?

Atoms crash at that speed "all the time" in other places in our solar system, unless my physics fails.

Mainly thinking about plasma here, but I know other cases where this may happen..


Also, I don't consider it a success before I know their tests for sure works when they crash atoms together.

The actual collisions aren't until October, and that's when the mBH's could open up.

A test run involves shooting the ion/proton/w.e around, not colliding it. We may still die. Yey

I guess if it kills us all, you can partially blame my bf's dad for working on last summer. o_O

I'm a lot more worried about the dark matter than the black holes. The black holes have already been shown to collapse quickly. The media just screams "Black holes!!!!111" because people actually know what they are.

But I don't think it's going to kill us all. And if it does, we won't ever know... We'll be vaporized before we realize what happened.

I died a little inside when they used a human hair as the comparative measure for the diameter of the beams.

i thought that was a stupid comparison too.


firing one proton in one direction isnt gonna cause any black holes. the excitement's just gotten to people. its when you fire two and the two come straight at eachother is when people should be worried.

its kinda like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syLIpK1_ltw

firing one proton in one direction isnt gonna cause any black holes. the excitement's just gotten to people. its when you fire two and the two come straight at eachother is when people should be worried.

They shouldn't be worried for anything.

Edit: Unless you know someone like this.

I guess if it kills us all, you can partially blame my bf's dad for working on last summer. o_O

I'm a lot more worried about the dark matter than the black holes. The black holes have already been shown to collapse quickly. The media just screams "Black holes!!!!111" because people actually know what they are.

But I don't think it's going to kill us all. And if it does, we won't ever know... We'll be vaporized before we realize what happened.

Why be worried about dark matter? According to theory, it's basically all around us.

Why be worried about dark matter? According to theory, it's basically all around us.

i think he means strange matter.
and he's right, strange matter is much bigger of a threat than a baby black hole.