Following the "splash" events of 6th/7th November (see here) the time has come to circulate the proton beams all around the LHC. This started in the early evening (Geneva time) on friday 20th and by midnight the beam had been circulated in both directions around the ring and "captured" by the Radio Frequency (RF) system such that the beam lifetime was about 10 minutes - a massive achievement at this early stage. Things proceeded pretty fast - within a couple of days beam lifetimes were up to several hours, both beams were circulating at the same time, beams had been ramped to higher energies and first collisions (at 900 GeV centre of mass) had taken place.
You can recall the excitement of the this period in three ways:
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