10th September 2008 - report from the CMS Control Centre.

Wednesday 10th September 2008 marked another remarkable achievement for physics, and humankind as a whole, with the first circulation of proton beams in the 27km underground tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, with which the Imperial College High Energy Physics group is heavily involved, also took its first "pictures" from these circulating beams - a huge achievement and a testament to the hard work of all those involved.

The official report from the CMS Outreach team, featuring pictures of the first events and CMS spokesperson, Prof. Jim Virdee (of Imperial College) enjoying some rather deserved champagne, can be found here.

This page hopes to capture some of the thoughts and feelings of the Imperial College scientists involved with the project - starting with a rather appropriate "Jim's eye view" of the day's events:

CMS Spokesperson Prof. Jim Virdee, of Imperial College, London, views LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans through one of the monitors at the CMS Control Centre. Photo: Tom Whyntie.

The CMS Outreach Team - Tom Whyntie

"The atmosphere in the control room was unbelievable. The decision to let the world watch, and share the excitement of our firsts steps into a new realm of understanding, was inspired. Thanks to the efforts of Lucas Taylor (formerly of IC), it felt like you there in the CERN Control Centre, where Lyn Evans (LHC Project Leader) was directing events with the calm collection of a NASA launch supremo and the feeling for drama of a circus master. You could feel the tension and excitement that preceded every attempt to get the beam to the next sector of the tunnel, and the relief that met the sight of the flashing beam spot that appeared, indicating yet another success. It was magical.

As part of the CMS Outeach media team, it was my job to help with the press briefings for the journalists that visited the CMS Control Centre and give interviews for UK journalists and other English-speaking countries who weren't represented at CMS. My personal favourite was the one I gave to swissinfo.ch (see below), and one Nic Cripps joined me on for Slovenian national radio - listen out for that one!

Dave Barney, CMS Outreach Director and formerly of Imperial College speaks to the BBC's Christine McGourty live from the CMS Control Centre.

The BBC had their science correspondent Christine McGourty based at the CMS Control Centre, which meant they were able to tap directly into the atmosphere of pure, unadulterated excitement for live broadcasts. These were handled by Dave Barney, director of CMS Outreach (formerly of Imperial), and our very own Claire Timlin, who's currently writing up her PhD Thesis. Claire was also the focus of the day's Women's Hour on Radio 4, and magnificently handled a technical hitch while being interviewed live by ITN that lead to the BBC team we were working with to describe her as an 'absolute professional'. It's fantastic that we've got Claire on the Imperial team - we'll need her when we get first collisions!

Obviously, I believe outreach - telling everyone about the science we're doing that gets us all out of bed in the morning - is hugely important for this kind of physics, and infinitely more so for an experiment of this magnitude. So the fact that there were apparently school kids all over the country who were genuinely afraid of the end of the world means that we're not doing our job. We're not doing enough to communicate to them that what we're actually doing is not only safe, but is what humanity is all about - exploring the unknown and finding out more about the Universe we're living in. We're also not doing enough to explain their parents how and why we're spending their hard-earned taxes on one of the largest machines ever built. But we're making progress, and Wednesday will have hopefully laid foundations that we can build on with first collisions, the attainment of full energy and, ultimately, the discoveries that lay at the end of the tunnel (or at Point 5, at least!)."

Tom Whyntie is a PhD student with the Imperial College High Energy Physics group, working on the CMS Silicon Tracker.

Read the swissinfo.ch article here.