Test&Expected results

Test timeline
The first beam was circulated through the collider on the morning of 10 September 2008. CERN successfully fired the protons around the tunnel in stages, three kilometres at a time. The particles were fired in a clockwise direction into the accelerator and successfully steered around it at 10:28 local time. The LHC successfully completed its first major test: after a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen showing the protons traveled the full length of the collider. It took less than one hour to guide the stream of particles around its inaugural circuit. CERN next successfully sent a beam of protons in a counterclockwise direction, taking slightly longer at one and a half hours due to a problem with the cryogenics, with the full circuit being completed at 14:59.
The first high-energy collisions are expected to take place 6-8 weeks after the start of LHC commissioning on 10 September. In the 2008 run, however, the LHC will operate at a reduced energy of 10 TeV. The winter shut-down (starting likely around end of November) will then be used to train the superconducting magnets, such that the 2009 run will start at the full 14 TeV design energy.
Expected results
Once the supercollider is up and running, CERN scientists estimate that if the Standard Model is correct, a Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. At this rate, it may take up to three years to collect enough statistics unambiguously to discover the Higgs boson. Similarly, it may take one year or more before sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles have been gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.
Proposed upgrade
After some years of running, any particle physics experiment typically begins to suffer from diminishing returns; each additional year of operation discovers less than the year before. The way around the diminishing returns is to upgrade the experiment, either in energy or in luminosity. A luminosity upgrade of the LHC, called the Super LHC, has been proposed, to be made after ten years of LHC operation. The optimal path for the LHC luminosity upgrade includes an increase in the beam current (i.e., the number of protons in the beams) and the modification of the two high-luminosity interaction regions, ATLAS and CMS. To achieve these increases, the energy of the beams at the point that they are injected into the (Super) LHC should also be increased to 1 TeV. This will require an upgrade of the full pre-injector system, the needed changes in the Super Proton Synchrotron being the most expensive.
Cost
The total cost of the project is expected to be €3.2–6.4 billion. The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of 2.6 billion Swiss francs (€1.6 billion), with another 210 million francs (€140 million) towards the cost of the experiments. However, cost over-runs, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around 480 million francs (€300 million) for the accelerator, and 50 million francs (€30 million) for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN’s budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007. The superconducting magnets were responsible for 180 million francs (€120 million) of the cost increase. There were also engineering difficulties encountered while building the underground cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid, in part due to faulty parts loaned to CERN by fellow laboratories Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab.
David King, the former Chief Scientific Officer for the United Kingdom, has criticised the LHC for taking a higher priority for funds than solving the Earth’s major challenges; principally climate change, but also population growth and poverty in Africa.

LHC on 10 september

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons charged with approximately 7 TeVs of energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.

wo beams of subatomic particles called ‘hadrons’ – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

The data from the experiment will be used to solve the mysteries surrounding concepts such as “dark matter,” “dark energy,” and, most importantly, “Higgs Boson.” The latter, known as the “God Particle,” is the only particle that the Standard Model didn’t observe, although it has predicted it. The “Higgs boson” could explain how massless particles manage to construct mass in matter.

CERN and Fernilab have made huge efforts to observe the particle experimentally, but to no avail so far. The hope now lies with the LHC. Nevertheless, it will take baby-steps towards the re-enactment of the “Big Bang.” First, technicians will pump a beam in one direction only. If this goes smoothly, the beam will be pushed in the other direction and afterwards, beams will be projected both ways, thus smashing protons into each other. Tiny collisions recreating the “Big Bang” will be produced later this year.