  Early November 2010, the LHC collided for the first time heavy ions, Pb on
Pb, at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV/nucleon. This date marked both the
end of almost 20 years of preparing for nuclear collisions at the LHC, as well
as the start of a new era in ultra-relativistic heavy ion physics at energies
exceeding previous machines by more than an order of magnitude. This
contribution summarizes some of the early results from all three experiments
participating in the LHC heavy ion program (ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS), which show
that the high density matter created at the LHC, while much hotter and larger,
still behaves like the very strongly interacting, almost perfect liquid
discovered at RHIC. Some surprising and even puzzling results are seen in
particle ratios, jet-quenching, and Quarkonia suppression observables. The
overall experimental conditions at the LHC, together with its set of powerful
and state-of-the-art detectors, should allow for precision measurements of
quark-gluon-plasma parameters like viscosity and opacity.
