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Last updated: September 10, 2008 12:11 pm

Slideshow: Cern’s Large Hadron Collider goes live

By Julie Jammot and Ed Hammond

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Designed to unlock the secrets of the universe from the tiniest constituent of matter to the distant galaxies, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider is the biggest atom-smasher ever built. Launched on 10 September, the experiment is set to last 20-years, employs about 9,000 scientists and has so far cost $8bn. What will it tell us about our own beginnings?

  • The 12,500-tonne CMS or Compact Muon Solenoid detector, part of Cern's massive underground laboratory that will smash protons together and analyse the sub-atomic debris that results, will be started on 10 September 2008
    The 12,500-tonne CMS or Compact Muon Solenoid detector, part of Cern's massive underground laboratory that will smash protons together and analyse the sub-atomic debris that results, will be started on 10 September 2008
  • The 27km 'racetrack' around which proton beams will be guided, aims at resolving some of the greatest mysteries in physics and will cross the France-Swiss border six times
  • Security is kept to a minimum, but eye scanners are used on access gates to the collider
  • A general view of the island SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) of the Cern Control Centre (CCC). The purpose is to combine the control rooms of the laboratory's eight accelerators, as well as the piloting of cryogenics and technical infrastructures
  • LHC project leader Lyn Evans of Great Britain poses at the control centre. One of the biggest quests will be to find a theorised particle called the Higgs Boson, which could explain nagging anomalies about mass. The Higgs has been dubbed the 'God particle', because it is believed to be everywhere but is so elusive
  • Cern’s computing centre, which will distribute data to 200 other centres around the world using a pioneering grid
  • Scientists applaud at the Cern's control centre during the switch on operation of the LHC. More than 9,000 scientists from 80 countries are involved in this 20-year experiment
  • Scientists control computer screens showing traces on Atlas experiment of the first protons injected in the LHC
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