Large Hadron Collider back in Action!

Tuesday 24 November 2009 – Physicists at RHUL are excited about the restart of the operation of the largest scientific experiment in the world. After one year of intensive repairs, tests and improvements, following a serious electrical problem one year ago the Large Hadron Collider (the huge particle smasher in CERN - the European Laboratory for Particle Physics – Geneva) is back in action. Last Friday night saw the injection of the first proton beams into the 27-km long underground ring in 2009. The engineers running the accelerator worked tirelessly through the weekend and on Monday afternoon were able to circulate two counter-rotating proton beams and make them collide. The first proton-proton collisions in the LHC were recorded by the massive ATLAS particle detector in the early afternoon.