Large Hadron Collider Begins Testing

The Large Hadron Collider, soon-to-be the world's most powerful atom smasher, begins testing this weekend.

CERN will fire the first test beam through one of the particle accelerator's sectors.

?It?s, ?Let?s see what happens,? ? Judy Jackson, head of the Office Communications at Fermilab, told Popular Mechanics. ?It?s a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready.?

Then, on September 10th, a full-power beam will travel through the accelerator's entire 17 miles of tunnels, reaching up to 99.99 percent of the speed of light. And finally, assuming all goes well, the first real science experiments will begin some time in October.

Though the initial test beams won't be nearly as energetic as physicists hope subsequent beams will be, they mark an important milestone for the world's largest machine. It's cost something like $8 billion and taken 12 years to build it and now we all get to see if it actually, you know, works. After it's up and running, researchers hope to use it to answer some remarkably important questions about the nature of mass, dark matter, and the earliest moments of our universe.


?It?s, ?Let?s see what happens,? ? WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?