Half way round the LHC
The LHC operations teams are preparing the machine for circulating beams and things are going very smoothly. ALICE and LHCb are getting used to observing particle tracks coming from the LHC beams. During the weekend of 7-8 November, CMS also saw its first signals from beams dumped just upstream of the experiment cavern.
Six of the eight sectors of the LHC have now been hardware commissioned to allow the passage of beams at 1.2 TeV. The remaining two (Sectors 3-4 and 8-1) will be powered up in the coming week.
If all goes well, in just over one week from now, the beams could circulate in both pipes of the LHC. The first low-energy collisions should follow shortly after.
Watch the video: