First Collisions At the LHC

An anonymous reader writes "At 1:06 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST) today, the first protons collided at 7 TeV in the Large Hadron Collider. These first collisions, recorded by the LHC experiments, mark the start of the LHC's research program."

Comments

First events

[mu22le]

One of the first events seen in Atlas:
http://imgur.com/ugwnl.png

and in CMS:
http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/events/snapshotA.png

Re:First events

[mu22le]

Here are the Atlas official plots:
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/public/EVTDISPLAY/events.html

CMS:
http://cms.web.cern.ch/cms/Media/Images/EventDisplays/7_0TeVCollisions/index.html

LHCb:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1255400

Alice:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1255398?ln=en

and finally all the CERN public photos:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/LHC%20First%20Physics%20Photos

This may be the biggest experiment of all

[unity100]

in the history of mankind. this may be the real deal. its possible that we may find the first 'entity' as described as the base of existence in Dewey B Larson's physics approach.

Re:This may be the biggest experiment of all

[symes]

I'm not sure this is possible. I once had a beer with an almost eminent particle physicist. We kind of agreed that if this is the "ultimate" God particle then funding for particle physics could be under serious threat. What is the point in funding LHC type experiments if there are no more particles to be found? After a few more beers we hypothesised that the God particle must be constructed from, not particles, but something else a little bit like lego. And that the only way to understand this lego-like property of ultimate particles was lots of particle physicists working full time for many years on LHC-II.

Re:This may be the biggest experiment of all

[Kierthos]

It's turtles all the way down.

Re:This may be the biggest experiment of all

[Hurricane78]

I wonder if they will go the Dark Matter/Energy way, and simply call the universe wrong. ^^

Surprised

[impaledsunset]

I'm quite suprised that I can reach Slashdot's server now that Earth is destroyed and gone.

Re:Surprised

[Fzz]

All the other versions of you in all the other branches of spacetime are toast. The only branch of spacetime where you can still reach Slashdot's server is this one where you got really lucky.

Re:Surprised

[Mashdar]

Phew. Solved that whole cat dilemma, then.

Resources

[tist]

You can see the beam status here: http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php?usr=LHC1 and follow the webcast here http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics/. The webcast screen also has links to each of the experiments.

Re:Resources

[RDW]

The live webcams are also worth checking out:

'Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side.'
'Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room.'

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Excellent news!

[rumith]

After all the years of delays and cost overruns, I'm extremely glad to see LHC entering normal operation mode. Congratulations to everybody who contributed and thank you very much for your commitment and hard work!
P.S. The labs down the hall that participate in the collaboration will be partying tonight :)

Re:Excellent news!

[quenda]

P.S. The labs down the hall that participate in the collaboration will be partying tonight :)

You can tell because they have undone an extra button on their lab coats, and are drinking full-sugar coke.

Coincidence

[hallucinogen]

While watching the webcast, just seconds away from the first collisions, the stream went down. I was like w000t! You have no idea how disappointed I was as I realized that it was just my shitty wifi..

Re:We hit 7 TeV, but how much more to go?

[John Hasler]

Nothing is equivalent to the "big bang". The "big bang" is a singularity. 14TeV isn't even equivalent to some of the natural collisions that happen in the upper atmosphere.

First collisions...not involving a baguette

[ruark]

The title could be a little more precise. This is not technically the first collision at the LHC. http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/0824213/LHC-Shut-Down-Again-mdash-By-Baguette-Dropping-Bird

MIT Ph.D now out of work

[Nighttime]

Hangs up his orange suit and crowbar.

Re:We hit 7 TeV, but how much more to go?

[JohnFluxx]

There isn't really a limit. You just get closer and closer to t=0.
The big bang timeline goes roughly (listing the time when the mentioned period _ends_):

10^-43 seconds - Planck epoch - this is where we need string theory etc. The universe is expanding really really really fast. Frigging fast. This is called 'inflation'
10^-36 seconds - Grand unification epoch - this is where gravity starts to become seperate from the other forces
10^-12 seconds - The really-really-really-frigging-fast inflation is now over. We've now just got the normal expansion.
    --- WE ARE HERE WITH THE LHC ---
10^-6 seconds - Higgs particles are now able to give particles mass. But too hot for quarks to combine into protons etc.
1 second - Quarks have now formed into protons etc
10 seconds - anti-matter is now annihalted somehow. All the protons etc have been created.
20 minutes - Hydrogen etc is formed. We now have real atoms! (Nucleosynthesis)