::LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: BEFORE AND AFTER

Introduction: Large Hadron Collider, as you might know is the particle accelerator situated in Geneva which is searching for a God particle or an unifying Theory of all. A theory which encompasses the whole understanding of Physics as it is. The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as much as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

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Particle Acceleration: The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008. The first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC was at 8:28 GMT on 10 September 2008, but the system went wrong because of a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008.
The LHC resumed its operation on Friday the 20th of November 2009 by successfully circulating two beams, each with a power of 3.5 trillion electron volts. The challenge that the engineers then faced was to try and line up the two beams so that they smashed into each other. This is like "firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other" according to the LHC's main engineer Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology at the Swiss laboratory.
At 1200 BST on Tuesday the 30th of March 2010 the LHC successfully smashed two proton particle beams travelling at 3.5 TeV (trillion electron volts), with a resultant force of 7 TeV. However this is just the start of a long road toward the expected discovery of the Higgs boson. This is mainly because the amount of data produced is so huge it could take up to 24 months to completely analyse it all. At the end of the 7 TeV experimental period, the LHC will be shut down for maintenance for up to a year, with the main purpose of this shut down being to strengthen the huge magnets inside the accelerator. When it re-opens, it will attempt to create 14 TeV events.
When do they expect to Find It: Anytime between 2009 and 2019.
More Info: Why?, How?, What?
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/


Any Latest Developments: Several possible detections of top quarks have been made recently by the LHC's Atlas and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments.

Atlas has seen nine collision events compatible with the top quark; CMS has observed 3-4 candidate events. But physicists stressed that more data was needed in order to support the conclusive observation of top quark production at the LHC. source

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My brain, Wikipedia, CERN(Honorary Membership).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html


List Of Experiments: http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/LHC_Experiments.htm