Bad Astronomy

LHC: Beams back in business!

Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider once again had a beam of protons whizzing around its 27 km-long circumference!

After a series of setbacks – some devastating, holding up the world’s largest scientific experiment for many months – this milestone achieved shows that the collider is heading back to full operations, which should get started again next year. There will be press conference about this on Monday November 23rd at 1:00 p.m. GMT, which will be webcast live.

And if you’re wondering what the crew at CERN think of this latest news, then take a look at this picture of them looking at the results of the start up:

That picture makes me smile. Those unemotional, cold, calculating scientists. Why can’t they ever reveal their true feelings?