Physics begins at the Large Hadron Collider

Batavia, IL and Upton, NY - The Large Hadron Collider has launched a new era for particle physics. Today at 6:06 a.m. CDT (1:06 p.m. Central European Summer Time at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland), the first particles collided at the record energy of 7 trillion electron volts (TeV). These collisions mark the start of a decades-long LHC research program, and the beginning of the search for discoveries by thousands of scientists around the world.

"Today's first 7 TeV collisions are a great start for LHC science," said Dr. Dennis Kovar, Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy. "We eagerly anticipate the work of the world's physicists as they begin their search for dark matter, extra dimensions, and the ever-elusive Higgs boson."

Today's proton collisions were recorded by the LHC experiments' particle detectors, known by their acronyms: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. While the LHC accelerator brings the protons up to their maximum energy and steers them around the 16-mile ring into collision, the experiments use massive particle detectors to record and analyze the collision debris.

"The LHC experiments are the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, and scientists from American universities and laboratories have made vital contributions to each of them," said Dr. Edward Seidel, Acting Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. "We wish all the LHC scientists success in their quest to solve some of the most profound mysteries of our universe."

More than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 89 American universities, seven U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, and one supercomputing center helped design, build and operate the LHC accelerator and its four massive particle detectors. American participation is supported by the DOE's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Now, the real work begins for the LHC teams. Over the next 18 to 24 months, the LHC accelerator will deliver enough collisions at 7 TeV to enable significant advances in a number of research areas. As data begins to pour from their detectors, more than 8,000 LHC scientists around the world will sift through the flood in search of the tiny signals that could indicate discovery.

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LHC achieves and celebrates record 7 TeV collisions

The image above shows the first approved event display images from CMS of 7 TeV collisions. Image courtesy of CERN.

CERN staff and scientists celebrate the LHC's first high-energy collisions in the CERN Control Centre Tuesday. Image courtesy of CERN.

New Astrobulletin feature investigates dark mystery

From American Museum of Natural History, March 24, 2010

The "Expanding Universe," a spectacular new seven-minute video produced by the American Museum of Natural History for the AstroBulletin, investigates one of the major mysteries confronting astrophysicists today: why is the universe expanding at a steadily increasing rate? When astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding in 1929, scientists assumed that the gravitational attraction between galaxies would slow the expansion rate of the universe. But in 1998, two teams of scientists discovered that the expansion rate was not slowing down but was, in fact, accelerating. Could the mysterious "dark energy" be responsible, or perhaps some aspect of gravity we have yet to understand? The "Expanding Universe" interviews two leading scientists, Alex Filippenko, of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California's Lick Observatory, and Josh Frieman, of the theoretical astrophysics group at Fermilab, to untangle this cosmic mystery.

Read more or watch the video. Fermilab's Dark Energy Survey project and Josh Frieman, DES project director are featured about 4:50 into the video.