Wow, we are getting about 10 or so emails and comments a day about the LHC – most leading up to last night was how the world was going to end, and now they’re starting up again on how the world is going to end again in a month or so. I tend to think these people want the world to end.
Last night the first test of the LHC (the world’s largest refrigerator) went well it seems, here’s an overview from the BBC along with a cool screenshot of their control panel.
Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang. They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash protons together with cataclysmic force. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics. The first – clockwise – beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second – anti-clockwise – beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.
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