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.”

The book’s called Voyage To The Heart Of Matter – The Atlas Experiment At CERN and it’s written by Emma Sanders and crafted by Anton Radevsky. It’ll be out at the end of November and run for about $US33. I just want one because it’ll satisfy both the physics dork and the bookworm inside me all at once. [Atlas via Shiny Shiny via OhGizmo!]

Separate from the LHC itself, CERN’s labs are sprawling and fairly old, so it’s understandable if they’re a little industrio-creepy. Which they are!

But considering the facilities are intended for similar purposes (in theory), and the CERN already employs a real-life Gordon Freeman, the likeness here is just uncanny, as if CERN ripped the models and textures from Valve’s FPS and somehow actualised them. (Or, you know, the other way around, which actually makes sense.) Check out the full gallery at: [CERNLove via Reddit]

Click for artistic impression of terrorist at CERN.

According to French newspaper Le Figaro, judicial sources point that the man—who has been working as a particle physics contractor since 2003—has links to Al Qaeda groups in the Islamic Maghreb. Le Figaro said that he had suggested terrorist targets in French soil. There’s word if the target list also included the LHC, however.

In a public statement, CERN was quick to remember that the LHC is peaceful, and no gain can be obtained from it by any terrorist:

None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain.

Indeed. Let CERN work alone in peace and fix the LHC while the rest of us don’t do our homework.

One message to all those trying to hurt others in the world, like Osama and Co.: Go f—k yourself. [Daily Mail]

The reasons floated for the collider’s foibles are many as of late, from faulty hoses to un-magnetic magnets to the aforementioned libidinous couple who’ve been assaulting coworkers’ ear drums with wanton abandon.

Nevertheless, pressure from scientists have forced CERN to start the LHC up in November, where it will then smash atoms at half power until next year—when it will have to be shut down again.

Meanwhile, this may all be moot, at least for now, as many scientists (publicly and privately) have turned their eager eyes to other colliders around the world, like Fermilab’s Tevatron, for use with similar experiments. [MSNBC]

This theory, though extremely difficult to prove conclusively, doesn’t jibe with CERN’s latest explanation for their LHC’s failure to perform:

The latest delays to the restart of the Large Hadron Collider are likely to have been caused by a faulty hose.

To the contrary, my Franco-Swiss friends. [Reddit]

“Science will help our faith to purify itself. And faith at the same time will be able to broaden the horizons of man, who cannot just enclose himself in the horizons of science.”

Uh huh. If you ask me, I think he was just brown nosing the God particle. [MSNBC]

No word on whether a faux-religious novel’s 500+ pages of pap will have to be deciphered first for the activation codes. Or if Hanks will be in the “long hair mode” Dan Brown requires, but either way, I want to kiss the PR person at CERN who had this idea. If anyone can find a way to keep us all from being Hoovered into a rip in the fabric of space-time, it’s the Hanks.

The wait until September just got even more agonising. [Telegraph]

Finding Higgs is the major goal of CERN’s $US7 billion LHC. But after an electrical mistake damaged integral circuits, its restart has been pushed to September.

That’ll give the United State’s Fermilab a fighting chance of detecting the particle with its Tevatron accelerator before the LHC can. Fermilab said it estimates that Tevatron has already picked out eight collision events which could be hints at Higgs, and that its odds of seeing the “God Particle” first are now 50-50 at worst, and 96% at best.

Professor Lyn Evans, LHC project leader, scoffed at the idea that CERN had somehow lost the lead.

“The setback with the LHC has given them an extra time window. And they certainly will make the most of it,” he told the BBC.

“If they do find the Higgs, good luck to them. But I think it’s unlikely they will find it before the LHC comes online. They may well be in a position to get a hint of the Higgs but I don’t think they’ll be in a position to discover it…”

“In one year, we will be competitive. After that, we will swamp them,” he added. Booyah.

[Dark Roasted Blend]