High on the wall above the consoles and computers of the CERN control room, a
blank projector screen brightened for an instant. Two small spots of light
flickered suddenly in the darkness, so briefly that you could miss them by
blinking.
The dozens of people crammed into the room yesterday, however, had been
waiting for this moment for their entire careers. They weren’t blinking, and
the place erupted into cheers and applause. After two decades of planning
and construction, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the biggest and most
expensive experiment in the history of science, was up and running.
The twin dots that appeared at 9.28am, British time, were the visual
representations of two streams containing billions of protons, one of which
had just been bent around a 17-mile ring at close to the speed of light by
the world’s most powerful magnets. Similar beams of protons – sub-atomic
particles that were forged at the dawn of time — will soon allow science to
look back farther into the past than ever before, at the conditions that
existed a trillionth of a second after the big bang.
The points of light left by the first protons’ lap of honour provided no
scientific insights. This was more of a test run than the marathon that lies
ahead. But success was essential if the LHC is shortly to start crashing
these proton streams into each other, to reveal new and perhaps surprising
physics.
In the central control room, and in those that house the LHC’s four vast
detectors, engineers and technicians peered at low screens, some blinking
with colour and others filled with rows of monochrome data. Behind them
stood many of the thousands of men and women whose brilliance has allowed
this remarkable feat of science and engineering to happen, looking up at the
key images projected onto the walls.
They are members of a unique community of thousands of scientists, from 85
countries, some based permanently on the industrial estate that is the CERN
campus, while others dip in and out. Many have been working, eating and
socialising together for a decade or more. Since 1954 the sprawling campus,
where the streets bear the names of great physicists and mathematicians, has
been searching for the secrets of the Universe. It now has the most
sensitive tool yet built for the job.
It is hardly surprising that many could not contain their joy and relief.
“Wow” was the simple response of Lyn Evans, the Welsh engineer who heads the
project team, as he watched his creation leap into life. He has been
instrumental in designing and building the LHC for 14 years — the
machine is his professional life.
“The main feeling is overwhelming relief,” he said. “It’s a machine of
enormous complexity, and things can go wrong at any time. Fortunately, this
morning we have had a very, very smooth start.”
Verena Kain, a senior engineer from Austria, is a more recent recruit, but she
was no less thrilled. She likened the atmosphere to mission control at
Nasa’s Moon and Mars landings. “I’ve not been to a Nasa control room, but I
think it’s probably exactly like that,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.
I had to see it a second time and I saw that it really worked. Everybody is
floating right now. I’ve had too many coffees as well, as I hardly slept
last night.”
The cheering began at 8.32, when the first particles were detected snaking
around the first three kilometres (1.9 miles) of the 27km (17mile) LHC ring.
By 8.55, it was halfway around the track, which will soon be used to smash
protons and lead ions against each other at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed
of light. At 9.28, only 56 minutes after the start-up, came the champagne
moment — the double trace showing that the beam had completed the first of
countless trillions of laps that will explain many of the enduring mysteries
of the Universe.
Once the clockwise beam was circulating, the anticlockwise stream with which
it will ultimately collide was inserted in the afternoon, completing its own
tour of duty soon after 2pm. Over the next few days, they will be tuned and
“captured” so they fire in neat pulses. Then it will be time for business –
the collisions that will generate new physics.
By recreating the environment of the dawn of time, the LHC will detect
phenomena that have never before been observed. It should find the Higgs
boson, the so-called “God particle” that theory suggests gives matter its
mass, but which has never been found. It should also determine whether all
particles have a twin, as a theory known as “supersymmetry” suggests, and
thus explain the mysterious “dark matter” that pervades the Universe, but
which cannot be seen.
The LHC may even find new dimensions, beyond the three of space and one of
time with which we are familiar. It promises to unlock great secrets of the
cosmos.
“Particle physics is a modern name for the centuries-old effort to understand
the laws of nature,” said Professor Tejinder Virdee, who heads the Compact
Muon Solenoid detector team. “Humankind has an unquenchable thirst for
knowledge and understanding the surroundings in which we live.
“The excitement is of having completed a machine that’s taken 20 years to plan
and build. Now we’re looking forward to the really interesting part: even
more excitement awaits us as we start doing the science. The LHC is going to
look deeper into matter and go back further in time than we’ve been able to
go before. It’s the most powerful microscope ever built and at the same time
the most powerful telescope ever built.
“We have these theories, and now we’re getting into new territory to put them
to the test. We don’t know what we’re going to find – that’s why we do the
experiments.”
The first trial collisions, from which researchers will calibrate their
detectors, could start as early as next week. The LHC will then start
operating at about 70 per cent of maximum energy, before it is ramped up to
full power next year. Discoveries about supersymmetry could come quickly,
but the hunt for the Higgs boson will take longer, with few results expected
before 2010.
For Dr Evans, 63, from Aberdare, yesterday’s achievement was “a great relief”,
the culmination of 14 years of work on the collider, and the harbinger of a
happy retirement. “Over the next year and a half I hope to bring the LHC up
to its maximum potential, and then I’ll go off and play golf,” he said. He
also won a bet with a colleague, who doubted that the first beam would be
running in as little as an hour.
Also celebrating was someone at the other end of a scientific career: Kate
McAlpine, 23, who has found unlikely online fame with the “Large Hadron
Rap”. Her rhyme about the LHC has been downloaded almost two million times
from YouTube, and has been praised for introducing a new audience to
particle physics.
Ms McAlpine, from Lowell, Michi-gan, watched in the Atlas detector’s control
room as the first beam of particles travelled through. “When the yellow and
green line appeared snaking through Atlas, it was a pretty exciting place to
be,” she told The Times. “I’m just amazed they pulled it all
off in an hour.
“The most exciting thing for me would be finding extra dimensions, though
antimatter is a close second. We see space, and it seems so obvious that
there are three dimensions, but if we can find proof that others are there
it would be mind-blowing.”
Thinking big
The 1,000 Genomes Project An international project to map the most
common human genome variants. This detailed analysis of the make-up of human
genetics will allow scientists to spot DNA variations between humans that
allow susceptibility to disease
The Boulby Mine Experiment Running since 1987 more than a kilometre
below the Yorkshire moors. Scientists are attempting to beat CERN in finding
the elusive “dark matter” that theoretically makes up over 40 per cent of
the Universe’s mass
LIGO American-led project that seeks to find the “gravitational waves”
that were first theorised by Albert Einstein in 1916. The project is
attempting to detect ripples in space-time by measuring the exact patterns
of laser refractions between mirrors
Phoenix Mars Lander launched in August last year, arriving on Mars in
May, below. The 18ft vehicle is designed to scour the surface of the planet
looking for carbon-based chemicals, water and raw materials. The correct
combination of these would offer hope of life on Mars
COROT is a telescope launched into the Earth’s orbit by a French-led
scientific consortium. Its purpose is to seek out Earth-like planets beyond
our solar system. Using a series of complex measuring functions, the
telescope is able to assess the habitability of any planet it finds
