LHC!!

Over the past couple years I've talked about my history with high energy physics (HEP) and my excitement with the LHC (here or here, for example).  Well, on March 30th they finally slammed protons together at a total energy of 7TeV.  Granted, that's only half the energy total they're aiming for, but at least it's doing real physics now.

Looking for evidence of the Higgs boson (that's suppose to be the particle that explains mass like photons do for light) or dark matter is supposedly the official reason for the LHC.  But there's always a perverse side of HEP that wants to break the Standard Model.  If you can't find the Higgs, or you find something completely different, then that's when it gets really interesting.  Sometimes I miss being in the mix of that, but life goes on.

If you're interested, there's lots of photos, videos, and other goodies at the public CERN website.