I was supposed to liveblogging this from the Science and Technology Facilities Council's "Big Bang Breakfast" event, but we had a bit of a technical failure. (Mildly ironic given that CERN famously invented the web.)
Luckily, CERN had no such problems.
The proton beams were oscillating too much at first, but were quickly brought under control as the tests went through more and more of the Large Hadron Collider's sections and finally right round the whole ring.
The LHCb detector first picked up some particle tracks around 9.30am UK time. This is what the first collisions detected in by the ATLAS (left) and CMS looked like:
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Before these results came in, John Denham, the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, reiterated the need for fundamental research such as this. He emphasised his point with a story of the first approval of UK involvement in expensive particle physics research, under Margaret Thatcher. Expecting her to be opposed to the idea, her ministers had carefully rehearsed arguments against involvement in a big, publicly funded, European project with little in the way of expected benefits. She allegedly replied: "Yes, but it is interesting."
I'm sure the pupils from Langton Grammar School would agree with Mrs Thatcher. They were lucky enough to have previously visited CERN, and made an appearance at the STFC's switch-on event to share their new-found enthusiasm -- one girl has even decided to study physics at University rather than business as planned. It's certainly a refreshing antidote to the widespread comments on newspaper websites from somewhat hysterical Key Stage 3 and 4 kids panicking about the end of world -- partly attributable, I would imagine, to a lack of specialist physics teachers.
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