Less spectacular than the Galaxy Dress, but classier. [Fasioningtech via Bornrich]

Next on the schedule is an intense commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity and accelerating the beams. All being well, by Christmas, the LHC should reach 1.2 TeV per beam, and have provided good quantities of collision data for the experiments’ calibrations.

1.2 tera-electro volts? Great. So until Christmas you can keep going with your normal beige lives, not taking any chances or risks, typing away in your hamster wheels. Two, remember that life can end at any moment, and get out of the wheel. To a beach. Preferably with another hamster. One with a nice butt and a pretty smile.

These are the computer images showing the first collisions:

Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC

Geneva, 23 November 2009. Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronisation of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the lookout for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” said CERN* Director General Rolf Heuer. “But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimisation, followed by LHCb.

“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 of the secrets of nature,” said CMS spokesperson Tejinder Virdee.

“It was standing room only in the ALICE control room and cheers erupted with the first collisions,” said ALICE spokesperson Jurgen Schukraft. “This is simply tremendous.”

“The tracks we’re seeing are beautiful,” said LHCb spokesperson Andrei Golutvin, “we’re all ready for serious data taking in a few days time.”

These developments come just three days after the LHC restart, demonstrating the excellent performance of the beam control system. Since the start-up, the operators have been circulating beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV. The beam lifetime has gradually been increased to 10 hours, and today beams have been circulating simultaneously in both directions, still at the injection energy.

Next on the schedule is an intense commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity and accelerating the beams. All being well, by Christmas, the LHC should reach 1.2 TeV per beam, and have provided good quantities of collision data for the experiments’ calibrations.

Whatever, I’m just happy we are not being sucked by a Black Hole right now. Life is good, my dear boys and girls. Life is good.

We like cool pop-up books here. Awesome scale pop-up cardboard office? Yes please. Designers Liddy Scheffknecht and Armin B. Wagner, I want your babies. Your cardboard babies. Sadly, the pop-up cardboard office doesn’t include a pretty sofa for siestas. [Likecool]

Sure, you can use a network to do the same, but can you rest your feet over Wi-Fi? Can you? That’s what I thought. [Cabracega via LikeCool]

That’s what happened after his presence caused 3000 hysteric teen girls to march into the Roosevelt Field mall, pushing everyone and each other aggressively. The police asked him to use Twitter to help disperse the multitude, which was getting increasingly violent. When he didn’t comply, they arrested Bieber’s label VP, James A. Roppo:

We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message. By not cooperating with us we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.

He is now waiting to be charged, probably with “criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration”. After that, the kid used Twitter to ask all the teen girls to go home because the performance got cancelled. Except for the two cute blondes with ultra-short skirts by the lolly shop, and the redhead with the big cleavage ordering pizza at the food court.

It seems to me a bit extreme and stupid, much like that kid who got cleared of criminal charges because of his status update. Why wouldn’t the police disperse the crowd by announcing the same thing using a megaphone? Or knocking them all with long-range tasers? I can go for that or for smoke grenades. Probably both.

But would a tweet make such a difference? What if Twitter didn’t exist? [Newsday via All Things D]

This 2.2-inch clamshell aberration – technically the Apple Q300 Ultra – costs around $US70, which is $US70 too much. [Shanzai]

Did I say brick? I meant surf board. [GameWatch - in Japanese]

[Thanks Eduardo Lozano]

This video shows Earth’s weather from August 17-26, 2009. It also shows how beautiful this planet is and how insignificant we are. It was created at a 7km resolution with NASA’s GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model.

The GEOS-5 atmospheric model was developed by NASA Goddard’s scientists. It’s based on the Earth System Modelling Framework, an open-source project “for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation and other Earth science software applications”.

To really appreciate its beauty, you can watch the 1080p high definition video at NASA. [NASA via @NASAGoddard]

The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago. We’ve learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That’s how progress is made.

Wait wait wait. WAIT, Mr Director for Accelerators Steve Myers, Sir. What do you mean that the machine is “far better understood” now? How could they spend a billion bazillion dollars on this thing and not understand it in the first place? Do we really know what are we up to here? Should I book a ticket to Costa Rica and go watch the end of the world from the beach?

The LHC is now circulating beams for the first time since September 2008 when it suffered a serious malfunction. It has taken them a year to repair it, which will explain the origin of the Universe or kick all of our atomic arses out of it.

The LHC is back

Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN*’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o’clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.

“It’s great to see beam circulating in the LHC again,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We’ve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we’re well on the way.”

The LHC circulated its first beams on 10 September 2008, but suffered a serious malfunction nine days later. A failure in an electrical connection led to serious damage, and CERN has spent over a year repairing and consolidating the machine to ensure that such an incident cannot happen again.

“The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators, Steve Myers. “We’ve learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That’s how progress is made.”

Recommissioning the LHC began in the summer, and successive milestones have regularly been passed since then. The LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, or about -271 Celsius, on 8 October. Particles were injected on 23 October, but not circulated. A beam was steered through three octants of the machine on 7 November, and circulating beams have now been re-established. The next important milestone will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now. These will give the experimental collaborations their first collision data, enabling important calibration work to be carried out. This is significant, since up to now, all the data they have recorded comes from cosmic rays. Ramping the beams to high energy will follow in preparation for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) next year.

Particle physics is a global endeavour, and CERN has received support from around the world in getting the LHC up and running again.

“It’s been a herculean effort to get to where we are today,” said Myers. “I’d like to thank all those who have taken part, from CERN and from our partner institutions around the world.”