cern news

Medical studies are soon to start with the MARS scanner, a revolutionary CT scanner developed by the University of Canterbury1, New Zealand. The scanner, which incorporates technology developed at the world’s leading particle physics research centre, CERN2, was recently shipped to research partners in North America.

Following the successful circulation of first beam in the LHC on 10 September, the world's largest and most complex scientific instrument will be officially inaugurated at CERN1 on 21 October 2008.

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the IT power of more than 140 computer centres, the result of collaboration between 33 countries.

During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel.

The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN1 was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world's most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning.

A low-energy run originally scheduled for this year has been dropped as the result of a number of minor delays accumulated over the final months of LHC installation and commissioning, coupled with the failure in March of a pressure test in one of the machine's components.