LHC: both beams running at 3.5 TeV

Strong Interaction by the LHC. The player may be visible on the separate page only.

According to a CERN press release (see also Google News), today in the morning, after 5:20 am Central European Time, both beams were circulating at 3.5 TeV of energy in the LHC collider! They're trying to be careful for them not to collide because 1) that could create a black hole that would eat the LHC alarmists and 2) they're trying to attract lots of media for the first sqrt(s)=7 TeV collisions.

See a fun article, ATLAS event display decoded, in the Symmetry Magazine.

LHC: getting ready for the 7 TeV fireworks
Older text: originally posted on March 11th

Today and yesterday, the media got full of "new" reports about the LHC shutdown. In fact, most of the LHC news in recent days talk about this shutdown.



That's completely silly and it further demonstrates the incompetency of the science journalists in most MSM outlets because the "news" is actually the same information that was known in late January 2010.

Well, it's probably not just about their incompetency: it's a result of their selective search for "bad news" even if they're neither "news" nor "bad" or too "true". ;-)




This reporting is doubly silly because the LHC is actually approaching a key and fascinating checkpoint: by the end of March or at the very beginning of April, the collider will begin the collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. That's quite an energy!

It will triple the current record (2.36 TeV, LHC, which slightly improved 1.98 TeV, Tevatron). This advance will arguably be more important than the doubling of the energy after the break around 2012 (when the copper connectors and other things will be upgraded as needed) simply because 3 is greater than 2. ;-)



Collider by the LHC

Within months from now, the LHC may discover some pretty cool stuff.

I will be recycling this article for further information from the LHC during March 2010.