After almost one year from the first 3 laps of protons in the Large Hadron Collider before a quench of a superconducting magnet damaged the accelerator seriously, protons come back in the LHC! And in a much less fanfared fashion.

Here the first press release:

During the last weekend (23-25 October) particles have once again entered the LHC after the one-year break that followed the incident of September 2008.

Friday afternoon a first beam of ions entered the LHC clockwise beam pipe through the TI2 transfer line. The beam was successfully guided through the ALICE detector until point 3 where it was dumped.

During the late evening on Friday, the first beam of protons also entered the LHC clockwise ring and travelled until point 3. In the afternoon of Saturday, protons travelled from the SPS through the TI8 transfer line and the LHCb experiment, until point 7 where they were dumped.

All settings and parameters showed a perfect functioning of the machine, which is preparing for its first circulating beam in the coming weeks.

Here a plan of the commissioning schedule; I’m looking forward for the first physics run!