Particle Fever Page #6

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might create a black hole

that could swallow up the earth,

and they filed suit to stop

the project from going forward.

Hello?

No, absolutely not.

Well, no, there is no scientific

ground to what they say.

It's not possible that the LHC

is going to destroy the world.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Okay, it is 9:
15.

We are 15 minutes away

from beam.

We've been sitting here,

about 7:
00,

and absolutely nobody

brought food.

Again, 15 minutes to beam.

- Ciao, ciao.

- Stress levels are high.

Ciao.

But since I'm in a room

full of Italians,

the stress level's

pretty cool here.

But we have no coffee either.

No coffee.

Who didn't bring coffee?

What we're going to see today

is the launch

of the first beam of protons

around this enormous ring.

Very shortly, Lyn Evans,

the project director,

is going to be addressing

CERN staff,

who are gathered

at different points

around this massive complex.

It's just the first glimpse

at the fact the machine can run.

I mean, so what you need,

really,

is, you need two beams

colliding together

for quite a few...

quite a long period of time

before you calculate,

get enough...

sufficient statistics

in which to actually

be able to look

for the new physics.

But single beam,

the first beam, isn't even that.

You're not even getting

any collisions.

It's just one beam

going around in a circle,

not even at the high energies.

Just one beam going

around in the low energy circle,

that sort of says, "Okay,

we made it around the ring once

for the first time."

And it's a huge event.

Right, after 19 years,

you've been waiting

for this first step.

Let's get started, everybody.

Now comes the day of reckoning.

Five, four, three,

two, one...

Now.

No beam.

Yeah.

So where are we

with the injection kicker?

Oh, well...

they're out.

Okay, never mind.

Let's go.

Five, four, three,

two, one, zero.

We get a beam on this pulse?

I hope so.

Yes!

Well, last night I was,

like, waking up constantly.

Like, "Did we set that right?

What about... did we disable...

oh, my gosh!"

Marzio.

I have a plot for you.

Okay, check this out.

This is Z.

This is timing, in nanoseconds,

which we knew

from the cosmic data.

- That is very nice.

- Yes.

Upstairs, I think people

were more excited about this.

If you're in Google,

that means... that's the world.

This is the most important thing

today.

This is the first,

and this tells us

a lot of things.

It tells us that

the magnetic properties

of the machine are good,

that the aperture is clear.

There's nothing is sticking into

the beam pipe anywhere.

So a very, very encouraging sign

and remarkable progress.

Did you guys see

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