Large Hadron Collider Achieves 7 TeV Proton Collisions

It is nice to see the Large Hadron Collider is finally doing what it was built for; and even nicer to see the world has not ended as a result.

http://mashable.com/2010/03/30/large-hadron-collider-2

"Two pivotal achievements happened today: First, the LHC finally managed to sustain a 7 TeV particle beam. Secondly, the first proton collides were achieved at this level of energy, which is a world record.

“With these record-shattering collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson. The fact that the experiments have published papers already on the basis of last year’s data bodes very well for this first physics run,” said ATLAS Collaboration Spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti.

Now it’s up to the scientists at CERN to analyze the data, which will probably take some time; look out for some exciting news from CERN in the days to come."