Beneath our feet on this warm November night, we have realized the ancient dream of turning lead into gold.

Another milestone has been passed in the long run of ATLAS toward new physics. On Monday August 9, 2010 ATLAS has recorded the first inverse picobarn (pb^-1) of 7 TeV collisions. The trend is good and we recently reached the 0.1 pb^-1 per day of integrated luminosity (meaning that we can now collect in ~10 days the amount of data we have collected over the last 4 months).

In the evening of Saturday May 15, we have reached a new peak luminosity record of 6 10²⁸ cm^-2s^-1

It took a little bit of time, but the wait was worth it.  The LHC has successfully achieved its first physics run with "squeezed beams"! 

Now that the LHC has established colliding stable beams at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV, the next step to maximize its physics reach is to provide the most luminosity possible.  As Leo posted, we need to increase the number of proton - proton collisions to make sure we have a chance of seeing the physics that we are looking for.  The reason for that is because different p.hysics processes have different probabilities.  These probabilities are referred to as cross-sections (in a vague reference to the particle's size).  If one multiplies a cross section by a luminosity than what you get is a number of events.

I was home sick today, probably from the stress of getting ready for "M-Day" (aka Media Day), more likely though I finally succumbed to the cold that had been spreading through the Control Room.  As it so happened, my laptop had been in the shop because it experience an "incident"  (actually I just dropped it) last Monday (the week before Media Day), and I just picked it up yesterday.   

Many collisions will be needed to unveil the secrets eventually hidden at the 7 TeV energy regime.

After decades of planning. After years of delays and immeasureable amounts of patience and hard work. The physics operations of the LHC has begun!

After ramping of the beams to 3.5 TeV and tuning, final checks, and some emotions due to an unforeseen beam dump, the 7 TeV collisions finally appeared on the on-line monitors of the ATLAS Control Room.

During this morning LHC has been working to give us the beam conditions for collisions.