CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has gone online, becoming the
world's largest operational particle collider. The LHC was the
result of $9B USD and years of collaboration from researchers
worldwide. It promises to unlock great mysteries such as the
Higgs boson and deeper insight into how antimatter behaves. The
launch did have its share of hassles. First, researchers were
alarmed by death threats from fearful observers who worried the
device would generate huge black holes, despite reassurance from
the world's top scientists that any tiny black holes that did
arise would quickly evaporate. Second, according to CERN
officials, late last night the LHC was experiencing some "small
electrical problems". None of these issues could put a damper on
the launch though and it continued on schedule. It turned on at
9:30 AM CEST and at 9:49 AM the first beam of protons was fired
through the first 3-km of the 27-km ring. It took 48 seconds to
generate the pulse. Firing ramped up and by 10:25 AM the proton
beam was trave