Large Hadron Collider sets new world record

News release from Astronomy mag.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is now the world's highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning. This exceeds the previous world record of 0.98 TeV that had been held by the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron collider since 2001. It marks another important milestone on the road to first physics at the LHC in 2010.

First beams were injected into the LHC November 20. Over the following days, the machine's operators circulated beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV, gradually increasing the beam lifetime to around 10 hours. On November 23, two beams circulated together for the first time, and the four big LHC detectors recorded their first collision data.

Last night's achievement brings further confirmation that the LHC is progressing smoothly towards the objective of first physics early in 2010. The world record energy was first broken November 29 when beam 1 was accelerated from 450 GeV, reaching 1050 GeV (1.05 TeV). Three hours later, November 30, both LHC beams were successfully accelerated to 1.18 TeV. First physics at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010 at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam).