In fact, it happened like I might have expected. There was a small bit of excitement when one of the many turbines around the ring failed last night, and had to be quickly repaired before injections could occur. A little bump in the road, overcome fairly quickly, and success in the end, somewhat delayed.
While I am caught up in the excitement of it all, I do have to keep reminding myself that this is a marathon, not a 100m dash. It is excellent to have concrete evidence that the LHC will provide us with a new window on the subatomic world, but it will take us months or years to open that window and fully appreciate the view. We have guesses about what might be behind the window, but are hoping to find something unexpected.
Oops, mixed metaphors. Oh well, that’s what you get with spontaneous writing. Anyway, it is good to see the events from beam remnants, good to see that the beam monitors are verifying the beam going around the ring multiple times, and good that the world is watching. But we’re still in the first steps of the marathon, where everyone is sort of walk-running and bumping into things and each other- We have a ways to go before we hit our stride.
