News from the LHC

In case you have only been following the news of the imminent collapse of the world, and not actually looking at the data that is flowing, you are missing one of the most interesting scientific experiments that will be conducted in our lifetime. Although the LHC is a single large installation, it has several major experiments and detector sets, each watching, recording and probing in different ways. You should check out some of these sites:

Images from first data collected by CMS. Watch the official CMS site, it is rumored that they are thinking of doing some live web casts of data collection in the future...

The official ALICE site is also posting images of the first beam passes.

The LHCb, which is trying to figure out why there is so little antimatter in the universe, has a website and has links there to some of their first images.

The ATLAS team made a flash movie of their first detections, and is sharing news and information on their main site.

Although the TOTEM group is not yet sharing data, watch their website for future updates and information.

With a set of computers that spans the globe, and public access so prominent, it should be no surprise that hackers have already cracked their way in to the LHC. While I understand the draw of the challenge presented by the LHC computer network, I hope that the hackers of the world show some restraint and do not cause a complete lock down of systems that would end this type of open data sharing.