World Survives Atom Smasher's First Go Around

The Age

Thursday September 11, 2008

Chee Chee Leung, Science Reporter with AFP

IT WENT off with a bang - but only a figurative one.

Despite the doomsday fears circulating the media, the powering up of the world's biggest atom-smashing machine was achieved without a hitch near Geneva last night.

Built to unlock the secrets of the early universe, scientists worldwide had been eagerly anticipating the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider - a culmination of 20 years' work by more than 4000 physicists, and more than $6.6 billion.

Soon after 5.30pm the first protons were injected into the 27-kilometre ring-shaped tunnel that lies 100 metres underground in a complex straddling the Swiss-French border.

In the control room, relieved scientists cheered and clapped when the first particles completed a maiden, clockwise lap around the ring.

It took almost an hour to circle the tunnel - the process had been slowed down to ensure the systems were working properly. When fully operational, the collider will send two parallel beams in opposite directions around the tunnel at almost the speed of light.

Powerful superconducting magnets cooled to the chill of outer space will bend the beams around the rings before they crash with the force of a high-speed train - recreating the conditions that existed just a fraction after the Big Bang.

By studying the new particles that form when atoms collide, scientists hope to learn more about how matter evolved. There are suggestions the machine could provide an insight into extra dimensions, dark matter or the Higg's boson thought to be responsible for the mass of all particles.

At the Melbourne Museum last night, physicists and school students gathered to speak via satellite link to Australian scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, which operates the collider.

Among the Melbourne crowd was Professor Geoff Taylor of the University of Melbourne, who is leading Australia's involvement in one of the experiments that will analyse the debris thrown off by the atomic collisions.

"It really is the beginning of an era of major discovery," he said. "It's a revolution for physics, we're not sure what we'll find, but we know we'll be finding some really important discoveries."

The first atom smashes take place in a few weeks. -- With AFP