After a few false starts this morning, the LHC started its planned two-year run of continual operations at 7TeV. The first few packets of protons set off a instrument warning that had to be cleared, or couldn't be focused properly. Once those hiccups were out of the way, however, the...
How huge particle detectors actually detect tiny particles
In part one of our series on particle smashers, we described how accelerators either bring together two light particles (like protons) to study new particles, or two heavy nuclei (like gold)...
Everything you ever wanted to know about particle smashers (but were afraid to ask)
On March 30th, humanity is scheduled to start running the biggest, baddest particle collider ever constructed, the one that makes its closest competitor, Fermi's Tevatron, so out-of-date that the current plan is...
feature: A photo tour of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Last week, Brookhaven National Lab hosted a press tour of their Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, one of only two active particle colliders in the US. The tour also included a...
Strange antiparticles pop out of RHIC’s quark-gluon plasma
So far, the LHC has been spending its time ramming protons together, leaving Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) the king of the hill when it comes to smashing larger atomic nuclei. When the nuclei of gold atoms collide within RHIC, their components dissolve into a high-energy state called a...
LHC gears up for a long run at half power before long pause
Last week, the people in charge of CERN, the European physics lab that is responsible for the highest energy particle collider on the planet, met to decide a course of action for the coming years. Faced with the reality that equipment upgrades would be necessary before the Large Hadron Collider...
Two events hint at impact of dark matter particles
There's a chance that today will go down as the day of the first announcement that we've detected the presence of particles of dark matter. Two talks from members of the...
Large Hadron Collider starts up, produces first collisions
Boy, you go away for a weekend, and all sorts of stuff starts happening at the biggest science fair the world has ever seen. The CERN collaboration's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)...
