Atom smasher catches 1st high-energy collisions

The world's largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorise occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.

The collisions occurred on Tuesday evening as the Large Haldron Collider underwent test runs in preparation for operations next year, said Christine Sutton of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

Two beams of circulating particles travelling in opposite directions at 1.18 trillion electron volts produced the collisions, she said. The Atlas "experiment," 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," she said.

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 travelled with 20 per cent more power than Fermilab near Chicago, which previously held the record.



