First beam for Large Hadron Collider

September 11, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC - An international collaboration of scientists today sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the world's most powerful particle accelerator-the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)-located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested a total $531 million in the construction of the accelerator and its detectors, which scientists believe could help unlock extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe.

Celebrations across the U.S. and around the world mark the LHC's first circulating beam, an occasion more than 15 years in the making. An estimated 10,000 people from 60 countries have helped design and build the accelerator and its massive particle detectors, including more than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94 U.S. universities and laboratories supported by DOE's Office of Science and NSF.

"As the largest and most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the LHC represents a monumental technical achievement," said U.S. Department of Energy Undersecretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach. "I congratulate the world's scientists and engineers who have made contributions to the construction of the accelerator for reaching this milestone. We now eagerly await the results that will emerge from operation of this extraordinary machine."

The first circulating beam is a major accomplishment on the way to the ultimate goal: high-energy beams colliding in the centers of the LHC's particle detectors. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. They could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover hidden symmetries of the universe and possibly find extra dimensions of space.

NSF has focused its support on funding university scientists who have contributed to the design and construction of the two largest detectors, CMS and ATLAS, and promoted the development of advanced computing innovations, essential to address the challenges posed by the enormity and richness of data to be accumulated. Continued support will enable scientists to optimize detector performance, successful data accumulation and sophisticated analysis, necessary for discovery.

"This national and international collaboration of unprecedented scope, and our investment in basic science, fundamental to the NSF mission, provide an exciting opportunity to solve some of the core mysteries of the universe," said Arden L. Bement, Jr., director of the NSF. "With the operation of the LHC, anticipation of transformative scientific discoveries soars to new heights."

DOE provided support for the design and construction of the ATLAS and CMS detectors through two DOE national laboratories-Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois. While the construction was managed through Fermilab and Brookhaven, scientists and engineers at universities and other DOE national laboratories-Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in California-played key roles in the design and construction and are finalizing preparations to collect and analyze the data at the energy frontier. In addition, DOE supported about 150 scientists, engineers and technicians from three DOE national laboratories-Brookhaven, Fermilab and Berkeley Lab-that built critical components for the LHC accelerator. They are joined by colleagues from DOE's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Texas A&M University in ongoing accelerator R&D.

"The LHC is a discovery machine," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, "its research programme has the potential to change our view of the Universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that's as old as mankind itself."

DOE/US Department of Energy

---

---

	Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider by Amir D. Aczel (Author) The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest, and by far the most powerful, machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, its audacious purpose is to re-create, in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss countryside, the immensely hot and dense conditions that existed some 13.7 billion years ago within the first trillionth of a second after the fiery birth of our universe. The collider is now crashing protons at record energy levels never created by scientists before, and it will reach even higher levels by 2013. Its superconducting magnets guide two beams of protons in opposite directions around the track. After accelerating the beams to 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, it collides the protons head-on, annihilating them in a...
	The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider by Don Lincoln (Author) The highest-energy particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider runs under the border between France and Switzerland. It leapt into action on September 10, 2008, amid unprecedented global press coverage and widespread fears that its energy would create tiny black holes that could destroy the earth. By smashing together particles smaller than atoms, the LHC recreates the conditions hypothesized to have existed just moments after the big bang. Physicists expect it to aid our understanding of how the universe came into being and to show us much about the standard model of particle physics—even possibly proving the existence of the mysterious Higgs boson. In exploring what the collider does and what it might find, Don Lincoln explains what the LHC is likely to teach us about...
	Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern (Author) An accessible look at the hottest topic in physics and the experiments that will transform our understanding of the universeThe biggest news in science today is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle-smasher, and the anticipation of finally discovering the Higgs boson particle. But what is the Higgs boson and why is it often referred to as the God Particle? Why are the Higgs and the LHC so important? Getting a handle on the science behind the LHC can be difficult for anyone without an advanced degree in particle physics, but you don't need to go back to school to learn about it. In Collider, award-winning physicist Paul Halpern provides you with the tools you need to understand what the LHC is and what it hopes to discover.Comprehensive, accessible guide...
	The Large Hadron Collider by Lyndon Evans (Editor) This richly illustrated, full color book dissects the technology of the LHC into its component parts, showing how state-of-the-art techniques have been applied to beam control (injection, stabilization, acceleration, and dumping); cryogenics; superconducting magnet technology; and vacuum. It also describes the civil engineering and logistical challenges of the construction of the machine as well as the theoretical challenges that drove the scientific community to build the LHC. Each of the experiments is explained in terms of scientific goals, new methods of particle detection, and the specific challenges of handling the millions of gigabytes of data produced every second. Written by the lead scientists involved with the LHC, this book offers a testimonial of this marvelous endeavor from...
	The Large Hadron Collider: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe (Astronomers' Universe) by Martin Beech (Author) It may at first seem that the world of subatomic physics is far removed from our every day lives. Isn’t it all just a waste of time and taxpayers' money? Hopefully, all who read this book will come to a different conclusion. Collider physics is all about our origins, and this aspect alone makes it worthy of our very best attention. The experiments conducted within the vast collider chambers are at the forefront of humanity’s quest to unweave the great tapestry that is the universe. Everything is connected. Within the macrocosm is the microcosm. By knowing how matter is structured, how atoms and elementary particles interact, and what forces control the interactions between the particles, we discover further clues as to why the universe is the way it is, and we uncover glimpses of how...
	Physics at the Large Hadron Collider by Amitava Datta (Editor), B. Mukhopadhyaya (Editor), A. Raychaudhuri (Editor) In an epoch when particle physics is awaiting a major step forward, the Large Hydron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva will soon be operational. It will collide a beam of high energy protons with another similar beam circulation in the same 27 km tunnel but in the opposite direction, resulting in the production of many elementary particles some never created in the laboratory before. It is widely expected that the LHC will discover the Higgs boson, the particle which supposedly lends masses to all other fundamental particles. In addition, the question as to whether there is some new law of physics at such high energy is likely to be answered through this experiment. The present volume contains a collection of articles written by international experts, both theoreticians and...
	No Canary in the Quanta: Who Gets to Decide if the Large Hadron Collider is Worth Gambling Our Planet? by Harry V. Lehmann (Author) Public interest trial attorney Harry Lehmann is on the case of what could become the greatest gamble our planet has ever faced. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is housed in a tunnel 17 miles in circumference, more than 500 feet underground, at the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to collide opposing beams of protons at near light speed. LHC was shut down days after its September 2008 launch by a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Now CERN claims it has repaired the original defects and resulting damage, so that it can "safely" fire up the LHC again. But this is the largest science experiment in our planet's history, and its "laboratory" is the planet itself. The stakes could not be higher. No...
	You, Robot?: The Vortex at the Large Hadron Collider by Mr. David J. Fisher (Author), Mr. Michael Shevack (Editor) A whole new "take" on robots. Not since Asimov has the Robot genre been given such a new approach. Best SciFi book of the season and beautifully printed. You will love this book. It is tied into String Theory, 12 dimensions, the Large Hadron Collider, dimensional travel, Higgs Bosons, Robots living in the other dimensions, and a lot more.
	True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism: A Hypothesis Associated with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Geneva by Chandrakanth Natekar (Author), Prashanth Vitla (Author), Prashanth Vitla (Cover Design), Sai Sambat (Cover Design), Sudesh Mahan (Cover Design) "Science is a simple phenomenon of Nature, but it is the known that is preventing us from mastering the unknown". True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism dwells upon some of the fundamental aspects of the universal binding force and hitherto unrecognized balancing force. Its prime focus is on the Higgs Mechanism and the puzzling mass of W & Z bosons. The hypotheses presented in this book will reveal the 'True Nature of the Higgs Mechanism' and the "True Nature of W & Z Bosons". These hypotheses can be experimentally verified at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Geneva. Alternately, the available data of the previous experiments of the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), Fermilab's Tevatron, Stanford SLAC and other colliders can also be used to check the scientific validity of these...
	Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology (Scottish Graduate Series) by M. Kramer (Editor), F.J.P. Soler (Editor) With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction and due to come online in 2007, it is appropriate to engage in a focused review on LHC phenomenology. At a time when most of the experimental effort is centered on detector construction and software development, it is vitally important to direct the experimental community and, in particular, new researchers on the physics phenomena expected from the LHC. Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology covers the capabilities of LHC, from searches for the Higgs boson and physics beyond the standard model to detailed studies of quantum chromodynamics, the B-physics sectors, and the properties of hadronic matter at high energy density as realized in heavy-ion collisions. Written by experienced researchers and experimentalists, this reference...