Alexander Unzicker set up an options market for the LHC, where you can bet on the discovery of the Higgs Boson within a certain time frame. If you sincerely believe researchers either will or won't find the "God Particle," or if you just like making wild guesses on subjects in which you have little to no understanding, put your money where your mouth is. But make sure to factor futurebird destruction into your time frame.

CERN should probably take this to the next level. Set up a grandstand and hire a few bookies. Might be a good way to recoup the LHC's $3 billion cost. [Bet on the Higgs via New Scientist]

The current snafu involves a power failure so serious that not only was the LHC itself knocked out, but so were all of its websites. Oops!

The good news is that the crucial cryogenics are fine and no serious damage was done. But it's just another setback in what's becoming a long line of them. It's OK, LHC! We believe in you! I'm sure you'll get up and running eventually. [The Register via SlashDot]

For me, it's nonsense to say that there are forces coming back from the future to stop the machine from working. It really is just ridiculous to think that is the case. If people could travel forward or back in time, why wouldn't they have done something better or worse for humanity than coming and twiddling around with the LHC?

If it does destroy the world, there's no-one in the future to travel back in time to do anything about it. It's all a bit Back to the Future really. It's part of this whole mystery about the machine — people are willing to believe anything. Physicists sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by not saying, 'We won't destroy the world with black holes,' because they work on probability. Saying, 'This won't happen,' is just not ingrained into them.

Good. But that doesn't explain this. Or the fact that an LHC scientist confused Star Trek with Star Wars. That last thing, my dear friends, is what really has me worried. [Crave UK]

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 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]

The results of that first test, a run of particle beams through the 17-mile tunnel, showed the machine in perfect working order. The scientists are hoping to have the LHC up and running as good as new in November, which after careful research I conclude is less than a week away. Sorry to drop the end of the world on you like that, but you're all going to die in November. Them's the breaks! [Pop Sci]

Except, obviously, in the case of the LHC this is real hyperdrive technology and testing we're talking about, whereas, sadly, Han's bucket of bolts will remain firmly in the realm of sci-fi.

But no matter. If physicist Franklin Felber gets his way then an ancient, unknown German research paper from the 1920s could get dusted off and have its thesis tested in the LHC. Called the "Foundations of Physics," the paper proposed that under certain circumstances a stationary mass can, on occasion, repel a "relativistic particle." Ferber's theory proposes that the opposite must also be true, and that this can be tested at the LHC.

In the experiment, Felber would monitor a test mass inside the ring as particles shoot past it. The work would not interfere with other already scheduled projects, and if it works we'd be one small step closer to unlocking that coveted near light speed achievement. That is, if the LHC ever starts up again. Where's R2? [Technology Review via Engadget]

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]

A bunch of students at a Brisbane high school filmed a dirty porno in a high school bathroom the last time news of the Large Hadron Collider was hot. Yeah, that video was literally dirty. Remember high school bathrooms?

Basically the guy convinced his sweet, innocent, and oh-so-stupid girlfriend that it was her last chance to lose her virginity as his buddy played hidden camera man, producer, and distributor. The camera phone recorded, underage sex act made its way through the community and could potentially result in child pornography production charges, although news.com.au claims it unlikely due to the age of all the participants.

No word on whether the sweet talker managed to hang on to the girl by convincing her that a miracle spared the world until November. [news.com.au]

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]

I know I'm scared. [The Daily Show]

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]