The true test of the Large Hadron Collider will come in the first two months of 2010, when scientists plan to start deliberately crashing protons into each other to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles. The collisions -- seen by massive detectors -- were a side effect of the quick advances being made by the LHC during its startup phase, which began on Friday night, said Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” said Heuer. “But we need to keep a sense of perspective -- there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics program.” Collisions were recorded in all four of the main detectors at “experiments” in rooms the size of cathedrals about 100 meters (300 feet) underground around the collider.
“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 Fabiola Gianotti, who represents the Atlas partical physics experiment for about 2,000 other scientists. “It was standing room only in the ALICE control room and cheers erupted with the first collisions,” said Juergen Schukraft, spokesman for that experiment, which involves heavy ion physics. “This is simply tremendous.”
Control system
A CERN statement said the simultaneous beams and collisions demonstrate the excellent performance of the control system. While the initial collisions were a side effect, intentional hits could begin within the next 10 days, mainly to check how the machine is working, said CERN spokesman James Gillies.
Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang -- which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
The collider was started with great fanfare Sept. 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It took 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted.
