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First Collisions At the LHC

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the make-sure-the-world-is-still-here dept.

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."

9 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. First events by mu22le · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

  2. Surprised by impaledsunset · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. Resources by tist · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Resources by RDW · · Score: 5, Funny

      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

  4. Re:This may be the biggest experiment of all by symes · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:This may be the biggest experiment of all by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's turtles all the way down.

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  6. First collisions...not involving a baguette by ruark · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  7. MIT Ph.D now out of work by Nighttime · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hangs up his orange suit and crowbar.

    --
    I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
  8. Re:We hit 7 TeV, but how much more to go? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)