After a year of troubles, the Large Hadron Collider has become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy about 20 percent higher than the previous world record, scientists say.
“We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly” it is working, said Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, Switzerland, which runs the machine.
A worker inspects damage of the Large Hadron Collider magnets that occurred on Sept. 19, 2008. (Courtesy CERN)
It’s “fantastic,” he added, but “there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.”
The record-breaking proton beam energy was measured at 1.18 trillion electron volts.
The developments come just 10 days after the particle smasher restarted after a year of difficulties , which began when the machine broke down in September of last year.
First beams of protons, core components of atoms, were injected into the collider on Nov. 20, researchers said. Over the following days, the machine’s operators circulated beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other, gradually increasing the beam lifetime to around 10 hours. Three days later, two beams circulated together for the first time, and the four big detectors recorded their first collision data.
“I was here 20 years ago when we switched on CERN’s last major particle accelerator,” the Large Electron-Positron Collider, said CERN Research and Technology Director Steve Myers. “I thought that was a great machine to operate, but this is something else. What took us days or weeks with LEP, we’re doing in hours.”
The first physics research at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010, at a collision energy of 7 trillion electron volts (3.5 trillion electron volts per beam).
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