I interrupt the normal agenda of this blog for the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider physics programme will begin with collisions in the LHC at 7 TeV (= energy level) today (30 March 2010).
Several webcasts are available from CERN, including life footage from the control rooms of the different LHC experiments: Atlas, Alice, CMS and LHCb.
There is a schedule page here.
Background videos, interviews etcetcetc here.
There is more information, like the animated LHC Status Display … just look around.
This is just soooo exciting!!!!
After 20 years of preparation … it is supposed to start in 30min. It will take some time to prepare for the injection and … in 1 hour and a half the first collisions at 7eV are supposed to occure.
Oh yeah, they will provide pictures.
Ok … accelerating beams.
3,5 TeV have been reached … The beams go in opposite directions, so the collision speed adds to 7 TeV.
(applause in the background)
Let’s keep the fingers crossed that things work out.
Status now: flat top
Now … patience is necessary. Nobody knows how long really we will need to wait for a collision. And hopefully nothing will force another abort.
They are having a press conference now and I will go and buy some coffee …
The beams are still being held separate by magnetic fields and will have to be aligned before collisions can occure – at least that is the theory.
Forget the coffee … they are aligning the beams now … counter almost to Zero. You can watch it go down in real (web)time. Amazing!
Beams aligned!!!!
YEAHHHH!
Now they are waiting stable beams …
Then the four detectors could start looking for collisions.
More applause!!
Apparently there are collisions but the beams are not stable yet and thus the detectors are not yet collecting data. Finetuning.
Atlas is on. About 40 events each second!!! Well, that was expected :) Nonetheless … FANTASTIC. Pictures will be on soon.
People are extatic!!! (Me too!)
CMS is getting it’s first collisions at 7 TeV too …. Now they are having 100 events each second … wow.
All the detectors are on. Now they are preparing some safety measures to protect the experiments … then the detectors will go on full mode.
Science in the making … It is all prototype.
Stable beams!
Guess, the hard work evaluating the data will start now.
ähm … maybe later.
I hear the word “champagne” over and over .. there are even some glasses clinging together … Guess that is good.
Most of the people are speaking Italian, I hear some German too, and few English words. Nice to being able to follow this. Great job!
A lot of calibration work on the way. Time for celebrations. They sure deserve it.
0 Responses to “Meanwhile, at CERN …”