I’m at a meeting in Cambridge this week, discussing details of the way matter is arranged in the Universe, and the insight that gives us into the fundamental physics of the Universe. Many of us have got up a bit early to watch the BBC coverage of the first beams at the LHC, since CERN’s own coverage is overloaded. (It so happens that I’m at DAMTP, Stephen Hawking’s home base, but he has probably wisely decided to stay in bed.)

So far they’ve got the beam half-way around.

We cosmologists are always pleased that almost all of the PR descriptions are about the kind of work that we do: recreating the conditions of the early Universe and finding dark matter.

First mention of the Higgs Boson… but very quickly followed by more cosmology: how will the Universe end?

Pointing out that we’ll have to wait for December or so until we actually get two-beam collisions at full energy.

But now it’s time to go back to my meeting…

And now they’ve apparently had beams going both directions…