Three days after the restart, CERN announced that it has circulated two beams simultaneously, and has observed proton-proton collisions. It's an exciting first step, but still a very first step:

"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."

It will still be a while before the LHC can go fishing for the Higgs boson, but the CERN researchers are fired up about collecting data on the proton collisions. The next step will involve altering the intensity and acceleration of the beams while getting a feel for the LHC's performance.

Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC [CERN]

According to Symmetry Breaking:

CERN today announced that the laboratory hopes to run the LHC with 5 TeV beams with collisions in late 2009, producing data suitable for physics analysis. Eventually the LHC will run with 7 TeV beams . . . A CERN management meeting on Monday will determine whether this recommendation is accepted and the start-up schedule does indeed include physics operations in late 2009.

In CERN's regular weekly LHC update, they said that as part of the campaign to avoid another incident like the one that shut down the LHC in September ‘08, a new protection system is being installed in the LHC to detect tiny electrical resistances on the superconducting busbars between magnets. Materials and electronics necessary for the system are being ordered and manufactured, with installation of some components already underway.

via Symmetry Breaking

With some of the world's richest companies slashing budgets and hunkering down for a slow-growth year in 2009, it's hard to avoid the question, "Is the LHC really worth it?" Though the facility will advance scientific understanding of the universe immeasurably, it will provide no short-term economic benefits. Discoveries made when the accelerator goes live could mature into devices that change our everyday lives in ten years, or in two generations, or never.

So it's easy to see why the LHC is pulling back on estimates about when it will actually start the experiments. Originally reps for the facility estimated that repairs would be finished and the LHC would come online in April. Now they're claiming June at the earliest. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get to celebrate the LHC's first real experiment until 2010, but let's hope not. $21 million is a small price to pay to unlock the secrets of the universe.

LHC Repairs Get Pricier [via Nature]

Kamps told Sci Fi wire that their plot plan for the LHC was actually picked up by Disney many moons ago:

I had this idea about a particle accelerator after I read about this one that they were going to put in Waxahachie, Texas. Did you remember that? It was during the Clinton administration, and they cut funding. But I wondered, 'What if they fired it up, and all of the laws of physics went crazy?' It was an idea that we didn't do anything with for about 10 years, and then David [Koepp] and I got together and wrote a script, and it was a great experience. We sold it to Disney, and eventually they didn't want to make it, but hopefully someday it will get made.

Which means by the time we're all done talking about it, the LHC will be popular again. But best of luck to you guys: Don't be afraid to tug our sciencey heart strings.

[Sci Fi Wire]

Penicillin - Alexander Fleming was studying bacteria in his own messy way, with no intention of discovering the 20th century's most vital antibiotic. Indeed, his lab sounds like something out of a sci-fi/horror movie, with bacteria and random fungus growing everywhere. Some of the accidental fungus had been tossed away, but looking more closely, Fleming noticed that bacteria wouldn't grow near some of the stuff. It took the work of others to refine and mass produce the extracted antibiotic substance, but if Fleming kept a neater shop, we may never have found it to begin with.

The Aether Wind - In the 19th century, physicists were stumped by the nature of light. It seemed to behave like a wave, so there had to be some substance in space for it to move through. They dubbed this hypothetical intergalactic substance "aether." It was theorized that the motion of the Earth through space, relative to the motionless aether, would subtly alter the speed of light depending on where in its orbit Earth was and what direction you were facing. This was called the "aether wind" effect. Polish-American scientist Albert Michelson (Polska represent!) designed an interferometer that could precisely measure the speed of light and thus detect this wind effect. After several tries and refinements to make his device incredibly accurate, no change in the speed of light was detected. Michelson, along with pretty much every other physicist at the time, was stunned. No aether? WTF?

Rocketry - No scientific failure is perhaps as spectacular as that of a rocket exploding on the launch pad, like the Vanguard rocket expiring in the 1957 photo above. The rockets that have died in the name of science number perhaps in the thousands, yet they did not die in vain. NASA and other government space agencies can put people and payloads into space with astonishing consistency (private rocketry is still catching up), giving companies the confidence to send aloft hugely expensive satellites and ambitious scientific equipment. Our world would be very different if we hadn't learned so much from all those shattered rockets.

Biosphere 2 - We built a big dome and let a bunch of people live in it (none of them were Pauly Shore) to see if they could sustain themselves solely on the air, water and food produced by the plants inside. They couldn't. The overriding element of the Biosphere 2 experience for most participants was "hunger." But when we build a colony on the moon or Mars or somewhere even more interesting, we will build on the lessons learned via Biosphere 2's rampant pizza cravings.

Nuclear Fusion - Is it a pipe dream or a holy grail? Either way, each failed experiment brings us one step closer to deciding that fusion is not worth pursuing any longer/going to provide us with so much energy we'll be giving it away. There have been lots of failed fusion experiments, but one of the coolest happened in 2002, when scientists sent incredibly strong sound waves through acetone. This created bubbles that expanded, then imploded at very high temperatures. It was hoped that the temperatures and pressures would be high enough to foster a fusion-friendly environment, but they fell a few million degrees short. Still, it hasn't dampened our enthusiasm one bit.

Honorable mention goes to Chernobyl. It was an ill-advised emergency shut-down experiment that caused that catastrophic meltdown and explosion there. Image by: NASA.

Things do not look good. Not only was the fire brigade called in to deal with the situation, but vacuum was lost as well as liquid helium. Here's what the BBC had to say:

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9C above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit. As a result of the [leak], the temperature of about one hundred of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C. A spokesman for Cern confirmed that it would now be difficult, if not impossible, to stage the first trial collisions next week. Further delays could follow once the damage has been fully assessed over the weekend.

Hopefully this will only be a minor setback, but we'll have to see what the LHC researchers say on Monday.

Hadron Collider Forced to Halt [via BBC News]

The rules are simple. Take a drink of your favorite beverage whenever one of the following occurs:

• A proton crosses the border between Switzerland and France.
• A magnet quench in a superconducting magnet causes all the liquid helium to boil away.
• A Higgs boson is detected (2 drinks).
• Scientists learn the secrets of the universe and go insane (2 drinks).
• A miniature black hole forms (2 drinks if it absorbs Switzerland).
• Strange matter is created (weird, unusual or eccentric matter doesn't count).
• A petabyte of data is generated.
• Someone sings the chorus of the LHC Rap.
• The Super Proton Synchrotron reaches 300 gigavolts (2 drinks if it hits 400 GeV).
• The Compact Muon Solenoid finds something that completely alters our understanding of the fundamental forces of the universe.
• Flight 19 suddenly appears over Geneva.
• Particle superpartners are found to have natural supersymmetry.
• An intern confuses muons with gluons.
• The experiment goes awry and someone ends up with superpowers.
• Aliens show up and make us turn off the LHC before we implode reality.
• Scientists go back in time (2 drinks if they create a paradox).
• Someone says "Big Bang."
• Particles crash into each other (2 drinks if there are Batman-tyle visual sound effects, like "Pow!" and "Zap!" when it happens; feel free to construct your own).
• Someone says, "What's a hadron?"
• Scientists access another dimension (2 drinks if that dimension is occupied entirely by Donna Summer impersonators; 3 drinks if denizens of said dimension eat the scientists; note that these two conditions are not mutually exclusive).
• Someone on TV questions the amount of money spent to build the LHC.
• Someone on TV worries that the LHC will destroy the world.
• The world ends (drink whatever you have left).
• Scientists prove string theory (3 drinks because we'll all pretty much have to take their word for it).
• Someone uses the term "beam pipe" in a pickup line.

Numerous studies have found that the LHC poses no risk of creating reality-devouring exotic matter or world-shredding mini black holes, but still the messages of anger and concern pour into CERN headquarters. Mixed in with the hand-wringing have been a few actual death threats, notably directed at physicist Frank Wilczek of MIT. Scientists have noted that cosmic particles bombard the Earth constantly, yet they haven't caused an apocalypse yet, so there's really nothing to worry about. I guess "the potential end of the world" sticks in people's minds better than "the search for the Higgs Boson."

Of course, when the Telegraph quoted Professor Cox's vitriolic paroxysm, they used asterisks to disguise the word he actually used. So what's a t***? Some obscure physics term, no doubt. Image by: xkcd.

Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider. [Telegraph]

The lyrics, plus an mp3 version, can be found here. Next time you're rollin' in your Escalade, crank up the bass and let the people know:

The protons and the lead will rock you in the head.

Image by: CERN

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• The Large Hadron Collider was conceived in the 1980s, and eventually approved by CERN, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), in 1994.
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• Some of the questions the LHC hopes to answer are: What is mass? What is 96% of the universe made of? Why is there no more antimatter? What was matter like within the first second of the Universe's life? Do extra dimensions of space really exist? Are stars just pinholes in the curtain of night? Okay, we stole that last one from Highlander. Sorry.
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• The LHC uses the tunnel originally built for the Large Electron-Positron Collider between 1983 and 1988, although it has required massive changes, including the construction of giant underground caverns to hold the large detectors for the system. Construction on those began in 1998.
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• The total cost of the LHC is not known yet, but it is estimated to be somewhere between five and ten billion dollars, which is quite a range. They've suffered many overages and setbacks since the project became active, CERN had its operating budget scaled back, and there were inaccuracies during construction.
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• In 2005 a technician was killed inside the tunnel when a crane load was accidentally dropped on him. If there's a movie waiting to be written about a ghost in the machine, this is it.
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• In March 2007 a pressure test involving several magnets failed, and as a result they had to push the planned startup date from November 2007 to May 2008.
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• The circumference of the LHC is 26,659 meters, making it the largest machine in the world. It also qualifies as the largest refrigerator in the world, with over 10,080 tons of liquid nitrogen being used to pre-cool the 9300 magnets to 80 degrees Kelvin. Then they get pumped full of 60 tons of liquid helium to bring them all the way down to 1.9 Kelvin. Just remember to write your name on your lunch.
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• When it's operating at full power, protons will zoom around the track at 11,245 times per second at 99.99% of the speed of light. It boggles the mind! Screw collisions, why don't they just shoot for some time traveling?
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• Speaking of time travel, the devices inside the LHC can measure the passage time of a particle to accuracies in the region of a few billionths of a second.
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• The tunnel has to be kept at a near-complete vacuum so the protons don't run into random gas molecules. As a result, the interior atmosphere of the LHC will be 10 times less pressure than on the surface of the moon.
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• While the interior of the tunnels are kept chillier than the vast reaches of deep space, whenever the protons collide they will generate heat up to 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun.
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• Each experiment conducted in the LHC will generate enough data to fill 100,000 dual layer DVDs every year, which is a heck of a lot of info. They've built a distributed computing network around the world called the Grid which will process all of this data.
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• The LHC could receive an upgrade after ten years, turning it into the Super LHC. This basically involves an extremely expensive upgrade to their Super Proton Synchrotron to increase the luminosity.
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• Some of the things that people think might go wrong with the LHC are: Miniature Black Holes - these exist for only fractions of a second and then decay, but naysayers worry that they'll form up into a massive black hole that will start chewing up France. Strangelets - these are hypothetical forms of strange matter that could possibly turn everything they touch into more strangelets, meaning the Earth would become entirely made up of strange matter. We think that's already happened. Magnetic Monopoles - another theoretical particle that only has one magnetic pole, and could cause atoms to change into different types of matter, causing another chain reaction that would overtake the Earth.
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• With any luck, everything will be switched on in May, and protons will start slamming into each other this summer. Of course, look for the movie version where Shia LaBeouf runs into the control room, mere milliseconds before startup, fights off the guards, and powers everything down and saves the planet. It'll be out sometime soon.