First high-energy collisions carried out in Geneva

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Wild whooping and cheering broke out as scientists celebrated the “dawn of a new era” of physics yesterday with the first high-energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. In the moments after the images of collisions were beamed into each of the four LHC control rooms, physicists of all ages and nationalities hugged each other, jumped up and down and popped champagne corks. On the third attempt scientists watching the event live from around the world described it as an “historic moment” marking the first step towards addressing some of the deepest mysteries in physics. “We are going where nobody has been before. We have opened a new territory for physics,” said Oliver Buchmueller, a senior CERN scientist. Betting has already begun on what will be the first discovery at the LHC, with the Irish bookmaker PaddyPower making dark matter the 11-10 favourite, followed by black holes at 8-1 and dark energy at 12-1. God remains the 100-1 outsider.

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