Large Hadron Collider is at the ready

On September 10, the world's largest particle accelerator will start up

ATLAS is one of the massive laboratories surrounding the huge underground tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider, set to start up September 10.CERN

Late tomorrow night, pajama-clad scientists around the world will get ready to celebrate a long-anticipated wake-up call for particle physics. On September 10, researchers will for the first time attempt to circulate a beam of protons around the 27-kilometer-long circular tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider, poised to become the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.

Although actual collisions between two proton beams aren’t expected to happen until October, the September 10 event is being billed as a milestone for the accelerator, which has been in the works for more than 15 years. The event will be streamed from webcast.cern.ch and via satellite.

In a few months, the proton beams will be five times more energetic than those any other collider has managed. Next year, when the accelerator is set to run at full capacity, each proton beam will carry seven times more energy and have about 30 times the intensity of any beam at any other accelerator.

The most intense collisions will generate the heat, energy and densities that existed just a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Physicists hope that the LHC will lead them beyond the standard model of particle physics and to signs of extra dimensions, new types of elementary particles that could account for most of the mass in the universe and, perhaps, rapidly evaporating, microscopic black holes that the accelerator may forge.

The first attempt to inject a proton beam into the collider tunnel will happen about 3:15 a.m. EDT. Hourly briefings from the CERN control center will begin at 4 a.m. EDT and include talks by LHC scientists and engineers as well as physics Nobel laureates. The nine hours of coverage will also include visits to the control rooms for the main LHC experiments and will show scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and at other U.S. particle accelerators enjoying the festivities in their pajamas. Click here for a full schedule, and on “planning of the day” for a pdf.