I was fixing to retire last night, but, as you do, made one last check of the tweets. Something was up. After a morning when – who knows? – yet another gremlin from the future had reached back through time and broken the machine, the Large Hadron Collider was spinning up for another crack. And there was video.
Video, mostly, of anxious, excited physicists crowding the control rooms of the four experiment groups, waiting for something to happen. There was nothing slick about it – the French woman fronting the coverage was almost overcome by her own sense of expectation at times, and some of those on screen appeared to have got dressed in the dark.
But the technology provided its own drama. The beams notched up to 1,75 TeV, then a little higher, then @CERN tweeted:
The ramp is successfully completed! Beams are now accelerated to 3.5 TeV, the highest energy! Preparing for collisions now!!
There was more tension as the beams were gradually brought into convergence -- and on a collision path. The people in the pictures began to twitch.
And then, a tweet for the ages:
Experiment have seen collisions!!!!!!!!!!!
And:
First time in the history!!!!!!!!!!!! World record!!!!!!!!
Woot, said all the people in the pictures. Amazing. It became clear that the kit wasn't just working, it was really turning it on.
It seems fitting that CERN, where the World Wide Web was germinated, should deliver witness to the greatest moment of its history via that same web. That in a quiet house on the far side of the globe, I was able to watch a new era in physics begin.
Meanwhile, in a third place in the world, Jolisa's physicist darling was marking the moment with … the Large Hadron Cake.
Experiment have seen crumbs!!!!!!!!!