CERN Announces The Large Hadron Collider Ends 2009 World Record Run on a High Note The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ended its first full period of operation in style on Wednesday 16 December. Collisions at 2.36TeV recorded since last weekend (December 12 and 13) have set a new world record and brought to a close a successful first run for the world's most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC has now been put into standby mode, and will restart in February 2010 following a short technical stop to prepare for higher energy collisions and the start of the main research programme.

The LHC circulated its first beams of 2009 on 20 November, ushering in a remarkably rapid beam-commissioning phase. The first collisions were recorded on 23 November, and a world-record beam energy was established on 30 November. Following those milestones, a systematic phase of LHC commissioning led to an extended data-taking period to provide data for the experiments. Over the last two weeks, the six LHC experiments have recorded over a million particle collisions, which have been distributed smoothly for analysis around the world on the LHC computing grid.

Large Hadron Collider Experiment. Randall Niles investigates the latest developments with the world's largest experimental machine.

The ultimate intent of the LHC is to help scientists understand the nature of matter at the moment the cosmos was created.

• Why did matter remain when matter and anti-matter annihilated each other in an energy transformation during the creation of the cosmos?
  


• What happened to the anti-matter?
  


• What makes up the 96% of the cosmos we now call dark matter and dark energy?
  


• Does the Higgs field (aka, Gods boson force carrier) that mysteriously gives mass to particles really exist?
  


• What about hidden, extra dimensions of space that quantum models show exist?
  

In a nutshell, the Large Hadron Collider experiment is a huge scientific effort to sneak a glimpse into the Mind of God at the moment of creation. Stay tuned!

Please visit http://www.allaboutscience.org/large-...

The LHC ends 2009 with successful high energy collisions.