Finally, The Large Hadron Collider, is ready to do some proton smashing. This weekend, physicists at the LHC began cycling protons through the 17 mile long particle accelerator. Daisy Yuhas from Symmetry Breaking reported “The Beams had energy of 450 BILLION Gigaelectron Volts (GeV) or 72.0979408 joules, which is the energy at which they are injected into the LHC.” This is good news for the LHC scientists and engineers, marking a ten week particle-free hiatus, giving them time to prepare for their biggest challenge yet… particle collisions at 7 Trillion electron volts (TeV). This is also a milestone marking the beginning of the LHC’s longest run, expecting to run until at least mid-year 2011. In the coming weeks, the energy of the proton beams will be ramped up toward this year’s goal of colliding 3.5 -Terra electron volt beams or 5.60761762 × 10-7 joules.

-Zach Morton “The Uber Geek”

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