The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is quickly making up for lost time: The first scientific results from the recently restarted particle accelerator have been announced—about two weeks ahead of schedule.

During the first collisions of the LHC’s twin beams of protons, a machine called A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, collected the results from a proton-proton smashup. Read the full story

Exclusive The Large Hadron Collider – most puissant particle-punisher ever assembled by the human race – has suffered another major power failure, knocking not only the atomsmasher itself but even its associated websites offline. The machine remains unserviceable at present. However its crucial cryogenics seem to have been unaffected, and no catastrophic damage is thought to have occurred.

News of the outage emerged when keen amateur LHC-watchers (at independent site the LHC Portal) noticed that most of CERN’s web presence related to the Collider had disappeared. Presently much of it returned, and with it came an official account of events released by control-room staff. Read the full story

The Large Hadron Collider is by no means the last of the particle smashers. A group at CERN recently explored the various scenarios that might emerge from the atomic debris in Geneva – and how they would shape what colliders we build next. We draw out the key points about each of the scenarios.
Detect a Higgs

What will detecting a Higgs boson mean?

If the characteristics of the Higgs fit with the predictions of the standard model of particle physics, it should be found within three years. The discovery would confirm that a Higgs “field” permeates the universe, lending all other particles their mass. If it is a Higgs that does not conform to the standard model, it may turn up even earlier, because it would likely be lighter and so more commonly produced in collisions than heavier particles. Read the full story

The operators of the Large Hadron Collider have successfully sent a beam of protons around the ring of the world’s largest particle collider.

It is the first time the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, has been operational since September 2008, when an electrical connection in the collider’s magnets melted, causing a tonne of super-cooled liquid helium to leak into the tunnel.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced the success on Twitter on Friday afternoon ET.

“We have completed the ring!” read the post on the social networking and microblogging site. Read the full story

The much-delayed and maligned Large Hadron Collider has been hit by its most outlandish claim to date – it is being sabotaged by its own future.

Forget the far-fetched belief that it will create a black hole, two distinguished physicists have gone even further claiming nature itself is stopping the troubled £4.4billion project from getting off the ground. Read the full story

The 32-year-old man of Algerian descent was one of two brothers detained in the south-east town of Vienne on Thursday.

Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France. Read the full story