Today ATLAS has recorded the first collision events at 2.36 TeV.
Still far from the design energy of 14 TeV but already 400 GeV more than the previous best collider, the Tevatron. Also a bit later than I suggested in a previous post, due to some problems last week.
In the plot you see one of the first 2-jet events taken. The lower right inset shows the energy distribution in the eta-phi plane (something like a rolled-out detector).

… for the first time! Since the innermost par of ATLAS needs special and safe beam conditions the pixels have been of during the previous test. Today the LHC was/is running stable with 4 bunches per beam delivering collisions at 900 GeV (450 per beam) to all experiments.
Unfortunately there was a power cut last Wednesday so the previously mentioned surprise will have to wait …

Seems like we might get collisions at 2.4 TeV this week … let’s see, maybe Wednesday!?

“Geneva, 30 November 2009. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator.” is the first line of CERN’s press release from this morning!
The picture is a screenshot from the LHC status webpage tonight at about quarter to one.

… it does! Finally the LHC has proven to be an accelerator as well! Yesterday a beam has been accelerated from the initial 450 GeV to 540 GeV. We’re getting somewhere …

Also yesterday, the PS, one of the pre-stages of the LHC, had its 50 anniversary.
Serving and accelerating all kinds of beams since November 24th 1959.