CERN smashes particles in collider machine

Faster progress than expected is being made on the Large Hadron Collider experiment conducted in Geneva by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Scientists announced on Monday that they produced the first collisions of protons beamed simultaneously in opposite directions around the accelerator, located in a 26-kilometre circular tunnel 100 metres beneath the ground.

“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” Rolf Heuer, CERN director general, said in a statement issued after these events.

“But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”

The LHC has been described by one physicist as “the most complex machine that humans have ever built.” After being delayed by 14 months by equipment malfunctions, the project now appears to be back on track with progress now more advanced than initially expected.

Since Friday evening the LHC operators have been circulating beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 giga electron volts. The beam lifetime has gradually been increased to 10 hours.

The first collisions of particles within the LHC marked a key development in the project.

Scientists are hoping the experiment will answer unresolved questions about the makeup of matter. Part of the project involves a search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle which could better explain the nature of matter.

The target date for the first new scientific development was mid-December and progress so far has been swift.

Scientists were initially unsure whether genuine collisions had taken place earlier on Monday afternoon.

Speaking to Swisster in Geneva yesterday evening, one group of CERN employees said “they thought the particles were colliding in the afternoon at about 2 or 3pm ...but they didn’t want to release anything too early after last year’s fiasco.”

During the first LHC launch fourteen months ago an electrical malfunction caused an explosion which derailed the project.

On Monday beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded a candidate for collisions at 2.22 pm Monday.

The ATLAS is a 7,000-tonne machine which detects head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy within the LHC.

The beams were then “optimised” for three other collision detection points in the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), ALICE and LHCb experiment areas.

“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,” said CMS spokesperson Tejinder Virdee.

He said during an afternoon press conference that his experiment would make advances “if nature is kind to us.” But he added that in order to find out specific details about the Higgs Boson particle it could take a few years.

Scientists working at the ALICE detection point responded to the news with cheers. “This is simply tremendous,” said ALICE spokesperson Jurgen Schukraft.

“We’re all ready for serious data taking in a few days time,”said Andrei Golutivin, spokeperson for LHCb.

The experiment will now increase the speed and intensity of beams. All being well, by Christmas, the LHC should reach the record high energy speed of 1.2 trillion electric volts (TeV) per beam.

A series of new collisions will provide data for the experiments’ calibrations. Physicists are hoping the experiment will provide explanations about the origin of mass, extra dimensions of space, microscopic black holes, and evidence for dark matter candidates in the Universe.

CERN’s twitter platform has gained 2,500 followers in the past 24 hours, with more than 37,000 people now following events.

Heuer told journalists at the press conference that he hoped bloggers would exercise restraint and only write about information released by CERN or the individual experiment teams authorised by CERN.

The institute is planning to keep the public informed about new activity in the collider. There will be a status report webcast on Thursday.

A presentation will be made on December 3, also available on the internet, entitled “From the Proton Synchroton to the Large Hadron Collider - 50 Years of Nobel Memories in High-Energy Physics.” Some of the individual LHC experiments also have their own web pages.