LHC portal

From the log book

"We are now at the operating energy, 1.38 TeV in each beam ... the highest energy ever for an accelerated lead beam"

Collisions any minute...

LHC Page 1 on vistar says they are "preparing for squeeze". What exactly is the squeeze?

Collisions have occurred. Looking for pics now...

first heavy ion collisions in CMS, ALICE and ATLAS! not yet with "stable beams" so no tracks seen (tracker switched off) but all going well!

http://twitter.com/CMSexperiment/status ... 1639561216

I'm glad to see the transition to heavy ions went as smoothly as possible. And more importantly, that we were not eaten by strangelets or vacuum bubbles.

Stephen wrote:I'm glad to see the transition to heavy ions went as smoothly as possible. And more importantly, that we were not eaten by strangelets or vacuum bubbles.

I am just soooooooooooo proud of you for getting though it stephen well done

Strangelets? I've so much to learn.

I wonder how could they have collisions in Atlas and CMS... AFAIK there was just one bunch in each beam and that should collide just in ALICE.
Beam-gas collisions?

Kasuha wrote:AFAIK there was just one bunch in each beam..

No, there was two bunches in each beam.
http://lhc-commissioning.web.cern.ch/lh ... an2010.htm

Beam 1 has buckets 1 and 13371
Beam 2 has buckets 1 and 22281

Beam 1 Bucket 1 will collide with Beam 2 bucket 1 at IP1 ATLAS and IP5 CMS

Beam 1 bucket 13371 will collide with Beam 2 bucket 22281 at IP2 ALICE because:

22281 - 13371 = 8910 the exact difference between two buckets to collide at IP2

Accelerator mode - Ion Physics.

First time I've seen that

Fun stuff

Whoo, hoo. Stable beams !

El Reg has another awesome story

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/08 ... omfoolery/

And I have changed the LHCPortal splash screen to a recent CMS lead collision..

Now that's a mess of a collision

Awesome