The Large Hadron Collider has taken a step closer to unlocking the secrets of dark matter as the atom smasher recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons.
The collisions happened as the collider was put through test runs in preparation for full operations next year, according to Christine Sutton of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN.
Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the Big Bang thought to have created the universe billions of years ago.
Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18 trillion electron volts (TeV) produced the collisions.
The Atlas, one of four major detectors in cathedral-sized rooms in the collider's underground tunnel at Geneva, had part of its equipment turned on and could register collisions.
"They recorded a handful of collisions, and one of them looks quite nice, so it's on their web site," Dr Sutton said.
Dr Sutton said the collisions occurred when the machine was ramped up briefly to 1.18 TeV.
That same level set a world record for proton acceleration in November, when Geneva's particle beams traveled with 20 percent more power than Fermilab near Chicago, which previously held the record.
The operators plan many more collisions at lower energies so the experiments can calibrate their equipment and prepare for more advances ahead.
CERN then plans more collisions at 1.18 TeV to give all experiments the opportunity to record data at that level, but new scientific discoveries are not expected before next year when the beams are ramped up still higher, to 3.5 TeV.
That will be 3.5 times more energy that has been reached at Fermilab, previously the most powerful collider
source physnews.com