I’ve been watching with interest the progress in CERN’s LHC and the upcoming first proton beam over the 27 km loop. Wednesday, September 10, 2008 is the day and I’m excited to hear how the tests go. The beam will be only in one direction, so any collisions will be from stray particles or beam positioning errors. However, as they calibrate the detectors and other instruments, it won’t be long until the many experiments planned for the LHC will commence. In particular, the search for the Higgs Boson is really exciting since this may finally add the source of mass for particles in the Standard Model.

One really enjoyable overview of the LHC is AlpineKat’s LHC Rap: