Texas Tech, where I teach in the social sciences, is one of 94 U.S. institutions participating in LHC research. Our physics department was one of those hosting an event last night, which I attended. The local newspaper did a nice article on the gathering, capturing the excitement of Texas Tech's high-energy/particle physicists.
As the bloggers at Cosmic Variance noted:
[Tuesday's] start-up is a symbolic event, not a physics event; as I understand it, the beam will only be circulating in one direction, so there won’t even be any collisions. Still, it’s a very important symbolic event! The first time the beam goes through the entire machine.
The Texas Tech gathering began with refreshments and some brief opening remarks by Sung-Won Lee, one of the physics faculty members involved with the LHC. The audience was then invited to walk around and look at various exhibits, video monitors, and computer screens, and chat individually with the physics faculty members. LHC-related pamphlets were everywhere, a couple of which I've scanned and added in collage form below (you can click on the image to enlarge it). I had some nice conversations with Dr. Lee and Dr. Richard Wigmans. After the open-house segment of the event, there were some talks by the physics faculty.
Here at Watered Down Physics, my aim is to provide non-technical descriptions of what's taking place at the LHC, among other physics concepts. The posting immediately below tells where you can find my previous LHC postings in the archives.
