After big repairs the big machine has restarted. They are going for 13 Tev protons this time. The previous max was 8 Tev.

I hope they find some dark matter!

Knew it was coming soon, didn't know it was today. Glad to hear that.

What are the alarmists afraid of this go-round? Last start up it was the "Earth-Swallowing Black Holes." Have ya heard about anything new, 'Wing?

Last I heard about CERN was that they found the Higgs boson. I'm probably late as the only one in my family that gives any credence to science.

Have you ever stubbed your toe on something you couldn't see on a late night trip to the fridge? You made a discovery then cursed it all the way to the light switch.

The newest "fear" is that the collider will open a hole into another dimension which will then swallow the Earth!!

Not likely!

I do that a lot! Last night it was my computer chair vs my little toe.

The chair won.

I'm late to the party, but this is very cool. It's hard to imagine how complex that machine is and how much energy is involved in the experiments.

they stopped it again, there was an "unknown" object in one of the tubes... thats the last i heard on it...

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/204011/mysterious_unidentified_object_at_cern_delays_experiments/

Dang it I didn't know they stopped it again..

Geneva is already half gone!

Scientists at CERN have been delayed in conducting a number of experiments using the Hadron Collider due to an unidentified lying object in the beam pipe of LHCs 17-mile underground , as yet, have no idea what this object is or how it got there. Physicist Albert De Roeck, one of the scientists working at CERN doesnt seem too concerned about the mysterious object, saying, The unidentified lying object turns out not to be a problem for the operation, its just something to keep an eye more here: First proton collisions at world's largest science experiment should start in early June

from your Link!

What is an "Unidentified Lying Object"?

someones IPhone they left in there?

What the LHC is doing (from the CERN website)

"

Why is gravity so much weaker than the other fundamental forces? A small fridge magnet is enough to create an electromagnetic force greater than the gravitational pull exerted by planet Earth. One possibility is that we don't feel the full effect of gravity because part of it spreads to extra dimensions. Though it may sound like science fiction, if extra dimensions exist, they could explain why the universe is expanding faster than expected, and why gravity is weaker than the other forces of nature.

A question of scale

In our everyday lives, we experience three spatial dimensions, and a fourth dimension of time. How could there be more? Einstein's general theory of relativity tells us that space can expand, contract, and bend. Now if one dimension were to contract to a size smaller than an atom, it would be hidden from our view. But if we could look on a small enough scale, that hidden dimension might become visible again. Imagine a person walking on a tightrope. She can only move backward and forward; but not left and right, nor up and down, so she only sees one dimension. Ants living on a much smaller scale could move around the cable, in what would appear like an extra dimension to the tightrope-walker.

How could we test for extra dimensions? One option would be to find evidence of particles that can exist only if extra dimensions are real. Theories that suggest extra dimensions predict that, in the same way as atoms have a low-energy ground state and excited high-energy states, there would be heavier versions of standard particles in other dimensions. These heavier versions of particles – called Kaluza-Klein states ' would have exactly the same properties as standard particles (and so be visible to our detectors) but with a greater mass. If CMS or ATLAS were to find a Z- or W-like particle (the Z and W bosons being carriers of the electroweak force) with a mass 100 times larger for instance, this might suggest the presence of extra dimensions. Such heavy particles can only be revealed at the high energies reached by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

A little piece of gravity?

Some theorists suggest that a particle called the 'graviton' is associated with gravity in the same way as the photon is associated with the electromagnetic force. If gravitons exist, it should be possible to create them at the LHC, but they would rapidly disappear into extra dimensions. Collisions in particle accelerators always create balanced events 'just like fireworks' with particles flying out in all directions. A graviton might escape our detectors, leaving an empty zone that we notice as an imbalance in momentum and energy in the event. We would need to carefully study the properties of the missing object to work out whether it is a graviton escaping to another dimension or something else. This method of searching for missing energy in events is also used to look for dark matter or supersymmetric particles.

Microscopic black holes

Another way of revealing extra dimensions would be through the production of 'microscopic black holes'. What exactly we would detect would depend on the number of extra dimensions, the mass of the black hole, the size of the dimensions and the energy at which the black hole occurs. If micro black holes do appear in the collisions created by the LHC, they would disintegrate rapidly, in around 10-27 seconds. They would decay into Standard Model or supersymmetric particles, creating events containing an exceptional number of tracks in our detectors, which we would easily spot. Finding more on any of these subjects would open the door to yet unknown possibilities."

Sorry but i really can't resist

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/206123-first-images-of-record-breaking-13-tev-collisions-from-the-large-hadron-collider-released

First images of record-breaking 13 TeV collisions from the Large Hadron Collider released


Well, they've finally done it, and so far there's no black hole originating in Geneva. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has released the first images of proton-to-proton collisions at a record-breaking energy level of 13 trillion electron-volts (TeV). The researchers set up the test collisions in a way that protects both the machine and the detectors from stray particles from the beam.

Researchers at CERN plan to continue the tests today, monitoring the LHC's performance and results as they go. Eventually, over the course of the next several weeks, the LHC operations team will declare the beams stable enough for actual experiments to begin. At that point, CERN will allow the experimental teams running the detectors ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb to each switch on their own systems ahead of the first data recording, which will begin next month.