Next stop, the LHC

An unassuming setting for such an ambitious project

By James Dacey at CERN

Early tomorrow morning, I will be leaving my roadside hotel and taking the second exit on this roundabout towards CERN where the scientists will embark on an infinitely more exciting journey – the start of the physics programme at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

This event is marked by the first particle collisions 7 TeV, which will set yet another impressive benchmark for accelerator physics.

CERN has announced within the last hour that the first attempt at collisions will take place any time from 7 a.m. Central European Summer Time.

I will be reporting from CERN during the day, but if you want to be even closer to the action you can follow events via a live webcast, which will include coverage from the control room as well as step-by-step explanations of the procedures.

Later in the day there will be a number of roundtable discussions as well as broadcasts from the LHC’s four experiments: ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHCb.