So how will this whole "First 7 TeV Collisions" event happen? Well, here is my (somewhat naive) understanding of what will happen.

It has been a BUSY weekend!  The LHC has been working around the clock get the machine commissioned, and ATLAS has been enjoying the many Firsts that have resulted.

At approximately 2:40 am Central European Time, ATLAS saw particles from the LHC for the first time in 2010.  As in previous LHC turn-on periods the first thing we see are beam splashes from the LHC beams as they slowly thread the beam through the LHC ring for the first time.

The Control Room is quiet. The configurations are set. The trigger menu is uploaded. The shifters are ready. All that is left is for the LHC to deliver beam.

ATLAS has been taking cosmic rays data this month exercising new features of the data acquisition, including protocols to start and control the run.

Today ATLAS has started the integrated runs. This has happened before, nevertheless this is the first time ATLAS subdetectors get together after the winter break, a lot of work has been done since then.

High Energy Physicists have been waiting for many years to see the LHC turn on.  Now that it has been turned on, the network of physicists around the world have quickly been harnessed.  It can be considered a phase transition in particle physics.

This early morning Dec.14 at 2.40, after a 8 minutes ramp, the energy of the two LHC beams has been brought up to 1.18 TeV again.

At 21:32 pm on December 8th, the LHC did something that no other accelerator has ever done before.

On Sunday December 6, 2009 at 8.00 the ATLAS Pixel Detector has measured, for the first time, tracks emerging from LHC collisions. It has been a very smooth start.