Successful First Beam Day at LHC

September 10, 2008 (HE22).  Most recently, in HE19, we reported on progress in cooling down and testing the LHC accelerator, based on a talk by Prof, Lucio Rossi at the CSC Advisory Committee meeting in Chicago, IL (USA).  We are pleased to report that, this morning, the “first beam day” has been successful.  Both beams circulated around the full accelerator ring (27 km) in opposite directions at the injection energy of about 0.45 TeV.  The CERN press release describing this major event can be read here.