Next on the schedule is an intense commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity and accelerating the beams. All being well, by Christmas, the LHC should reach 1.2 TeV per beam, and have provided good quantities of collision data for the experiments' calibrations.

1.2 tera-electro volts? Great. Hookai, so, until Christmas you have two options: One, you can keep going on with your normal beige life, not taking any chances or risks, typing away in your hamster wheel. Two, remember that life can end at any moment, and get out of the wheel. To a beach. Preferably with another hamster. One with a nice butt and a pretty smile.

These are the computer images showing the first collisions:

Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC

Geneva, 23 November 2009. Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the lookout for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

"It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time," said CERN* Director General Rolf Heuer. "But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there's still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme."

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimisation, followed by LHCb.

"This is great news, the start of a fantastic era of physics and hopefully discoveries after 20 years' work by the international community to build a machine and detectors of unprecedented complexity and performance," said ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti.

"The events so far mark the start of the second half of this incredible voyage of discovery of the secrets of nature," said CMS spokesperson Tejinder Virdee.

"It was standing room only in the ALICE control room and cheers erupted with the first collisions," said ALICE spokesperson Jurgen Schukraft. "This is simply tremendous."

"The tracks we're seeing are beautiful," said LHCb spokesperson Andrei Golutvin, "we're all ready for serious data taking in a few days time."

These developments come just three days after the LHC restart, demonstrating the excellent performance of the beam control system. Since the start-up, the operators have been circulating beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV. The beam lifetime has gradually been increased to 10 hours, and today beams have been circulating simultaneously in both directions, still at the injection energy.

Next on the schedule is an intense commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity and accelerating the beams. All being well, by Christmas, the LHC should reach 1.2 TeV per beam, and have provided good quantities of collision data for the experiments' calibrations.

I'm happy it worked for you, people, because I'm for sure glad of not being sucked in by a Black Hole right now. Life is good, my dear boys and girls. Life is good.

The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago. We've learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That's how progress is made.

Wait wait wait. WAIT, Mr. Director for Accelerators Steve Myers Sir. What do you mean that the machine is "far better understood" now? How could they spend a billion brazillion dollars in this thing and don't understand it in the first place? Do we really know what are we up to here? Should I book a ticket to Costa Rica and go watch the end of the world from the beach?

The LHC is now circulating beams for the first time since September 2008, when it suffered a serious malfunction. It has taken them a year to repair it, which will explain the origin of the Universe or kick all our atomic asses out of it.

The LHC is back

Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the world's most powerful particle accelerator, CERN*'s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o'clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.

"It's great to see beam circulating in the LHC again," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. "We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way."

The LHC circulated its first beams on 10 September 2008, but suffered a serious malfunction nine days later. A failure in an electrical connection led to serious damage, and CERN has spent over a year repairing and consolidating the machine to ensure that such an incident cannot happen again.

"The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago," said CERN's Director for Accelerators, Steve Myers. "We've learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That's how progress is made."

Recommissioning the LHC began in the summer, and successive milestones have regularly been passed since then. The LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, or about -271 Celsius, on 8 October. Particles were injected on 23 October, but not circulated. A beam was steered through three octants of the machine on 7 November, and circulating beams have now been re-established. The next important milestone will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now. These will give the experimental collaborations their first collision data, enabling important calibration work to be carried out. This is significant, since up to now, all the data they have recorded comes from cosmic rays. Ramping the beams to high energy will follow in preparation for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) next year.

Particle physics is a global endeavour, and CERN has received support from around the world in getting the LHC up and running again.

"It's been a herculean effort to get to where we are today," said Myers. "I'd like to thank all those who have taken part, from CERN and from our partner institutions around the world."

The book's called Voyage To The Heart Of Matter – The Atlas Experiment At CERN and it's written by Emma Sanders and crafted by Anton Radevsky. It'll be out at the end of November and run for about $33. I just want one because it'll satisfy both the physics dork and the bookworm inside me all at once. [Atlas via Shiny Shiny via OhGizmo!]

Separate from the LHC itself, CERN's labs are sprawling and fairly old, so it's understandable if they're a little industrio-creepy. Which they are!

But considering the facilities are intended for similar purposes (in theory), and the CERN already employs a real-life Gordon Freeman, the likeness here is just uncanny, as if CERN ripped the models and textures from Valve's FPS and somehow actualized them. (Or, you know, the other way around, which actually makes sense.) Check out the full gallery at: [CERNLove via Reddit]

Click for artistic impression of terrorist at CERN

According to French newspaper Le Figaro, judicial sources point that the man—who has been working as a particle physics contractor since 2003—has links to Al Qaeda groups in the Islamic Maghreb. Le Figaro said that he had suggested terrorist targets in French soil. There's word if the target list also included the LHC, however.

In a public statement, CERN was quick to remember that the LHC is peaceful, and no gain can be obtained from it by any terrorist:

None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain.

Indeed. Let CERN work alone in peace and fix the LHC while the rest of us don't do our homework.

One message to all those trying to hurt others in the world, like Osama and Co.: Go f*ck yourself. [Daily Mail]

The reasons floated for the collider's foibles are many as of late, from faulty hoses to un-magnetic magnets to the aforementioned libidinous couple who've been assaulting coworkers' ear drums with wanton abandon.

Nevertheless, pressure from scientists have forced CERN to start the LHC up in November, where it will then smash atoms at half power until next year—when it will have to be shut down again.

Meanwhile, this may all be moot, at least for now, as many scientists (publicly and privately) have turned their eager eyes to other colliders around the world, like Fermilab's Tevatron, for use with similar experiments. [MSNBC]

This theory, though extremely difficult to prove conclusively, doesn't jibe with CERN's latest explanation for their LHC's failure to perform:

The latest delays to the restart of the Large Hadron Collider are likely to have been caused by a faulty hose.

To the contrary, my Franco-Swiss friends. [Reddit]

"Science will help our faith to purify itself. And faith at the same time will be able to broaden the horizons of man, who cannot just enclose himself in the horizons of science."

Uh huh. If you ask me, I think he was just brown nosing the God particle. [MSNBC]

No word on whether a faux-religious novel's 500+ pages of pap will have to be deciphered first for the activation codes. Or if Hanks will be in the "long hair mode" Dan Brown requires, but either way, I want to kiss the PR person at CERN who had this idea. If anyone can find a way to keep us all from being Hoovered into a rip in the fabric of space-time, it's the Hanks.

The wait until September just got even more agonizing. [Telegraph]

Finding Higgs is the major goal of CERN's $7 billion LHC. But after an electrical mistake damaged integral circuits, its restart has been pushed to September.

That'll give the United State's Fermilab a fighting chance of detecting the particle with its Tevatron accelerator before the LHC can. Fermilab said it estimates that Tevatron has already picked out eight collision events which could be hints at Higgs, and that its odds of seeing the "God Particle" first are now 50-50 at worst, and 96% at best.

Professor Lyn Evans, LHC project leader, scoffed at the idea that CERN had somehow lost the lead.

"The setback with the LHC has given them an extra time window. And they certainly will make the most of it," he told the BBC.

"If they do find the Higgs, good luck to them. But I think it's unlikely they will find it before the LHC comes online. They may well be in a position to get a hint of the Higgs but I don't think they'll be in a position to discover it..."

"In one year, we will be competitive. After that, we will swamp them," he added. Booyah.

It was previously hoped that the LHC's tunnels would be down to near absolute zero in time for a summer reactivation, but September is now the goal to accommodate further safety features and inspections. Experiment data will be in eager physicists' hands by early 2010 by the new schedule. [Reuters]

For someone who doesn't know his quench detector from his quadropole Q24, it's not easy to see what's going on here. But it does look like something is amiss, that's for sure. Aside from wrecking 53 of the Large Hadron's magnets, the incident released six tons of helium into the atmosphere. There have been no reports of Geneva's residents all talking like Chipmunks on that fateful day, however.

CERN also reiterated their hopes to get the Large Hadron Collider back to colliding by June of next year. Two of the 53 replacement magnets have already been installed. [CERN Press Release via Cosmic Variance]

According to spokesperson James Gillies, the complicated repairs can be simplified into modest Plan A and Plan B approach.

Plan A is a quick and dirty fix, getting the particle accelerator online as quickly as possible (late summer 2009) at the cost of operating at lower power. In this scenario, 3 of 8 pressure relief-system segments are replaced (only the broken ones) with the other 5 getting upgraded at unsaid maintenance dates in the future.

Plan B is the more extensive but also more delayed approach, requiring the complete redesign and replacement of the LHC's entire pressure-relief system. Under this scenario, the LHC wouldn't go online until 2010 at the earliest, though at that time the system could operate at full power.

As of right now, the team is moving ahead with Plan A in the interest of getting data as soon as possible. Since we have absolutely no way of knowing which course of action is best, we'll just support whatever the crazy physics geniuses decide. [DailyTech]

The network uses fiber optic transmission to send information to 11 primary data centers in Europe, North America and Asia. From these centers, the data is passed to 140 secondary centers globally.

The processing architecture not only distributes the heavy processing load to computers across the world, but it allows 7,000 scientists to share access to LHC data, to sift through the mountains of information for a nugget of valuable data. And when it comes to understanding the fundamental nature of our Universe, we'll take all the eyes we can get. [China View]

CERN spokesman James Gillies explained, “"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out.” The specific section will have to have its temperature raised significantly above its usual absolute zero so engineers can go in and repair it without dying, which is apparently a very time-consuming process. This kind of failure isn't unusual for particle accelerators, but the LHC's internal temperature makes the whole ordeal much more difficult. Each warm-up or cool-down takes a minimum of several weeks, so the total repair will last more than two months. I suppose we've waited a long time already to unlock the secrets of the universe, so a couple more months can't hurt, right? [CNN]

No black holes, no tearing of space-time fabric, no instant worm hole to the Gamma Quadrant. "There is a wry sense of humor that pervades the [LHC] scientists," said Steve Nahn, one of the MIT researchers on duty at the LHC. In addition to the sign that warns users of a black hole creation, there's another equally predictable sign on the side of the balcony overlooking the detector that reads "Please do not feed the Physicists."

Can you imagine using a 14-mile ring to monitor particles that look like pucks to a hockey rink of an atom? And doing it while death threats from ignorant loonies the world over come pouring in? "There's a fair amount of stress at times trying to make the detector go, so defusing it with humor is one way to maintain sanity," Nahn said.

Note: We tried to get an actual image of the black hole button and the sign, but the LHC's no photography policy got in our way, hence the artist's rendering above.

Picture found! Thanks, Steve Nahn! [Flickr]