CERN atom-smasher restarts after 14-month hiatus: official
GENEVA — The world's biggest atom-smasher, shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, restarted on Friday, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said.
"The first tests of injecting sub-atomic particles began around 1600 (1500 GMT)," CERN spokesman James Gillies told AFP.
He said the injections lasted a fraction of a second, enough for "a half or even a complete circuit" of the Large Hadron Collider built in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) long tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
CERN's director general Rolf Heuer said later the scientists had been successful and that they had been able to go ahead earlier than expected.
"If all goes well tonight we will try to circulate a beam of particles for several minutes around 0700 (0600 GMT)," on Saturday, added Gillies.
The LHC promises to unlock scientific mysteries about the creation of the Universe and the fundamental nature of matter.
But the machine was shut down just nine days after its inauguration last September following a series of technical faults.
Since then, the LHC's components have been tested to an energy equivalent of five teraelectronvolts at full power.
The maximum output of what is currently the largest functioning collider in the world, at the Fermilab near Chicago in the United States, is one teraelectronvolt.
CERN had said in August that upon its relaunch, the LHC will run at 3.5 teraelectronvolts in order to allow its operators to gain experience of running the machine.
The first data should be collected a few weeks after the first particle beam is fired.
CERN said the partial power level will be kept until "a significant data sample has been gathered" and ramped up thereafter.
Designed to shed light on the origins of the universe, the LHC at CERN took nearly 20 years to complete and cost six billion Swiss francs (3.9 billion euros, 4.9 billion dollars) to build.
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The Large Hadron Collider, a vast scientific experiment to smash together sub-atomic particles, moved a step closer to its goal on Friday night. Physicists announced they had sent protons all the way round the 27 km ring beneath the France–Switzerland border, for the first time since a major failure 14 months ago.

Part of the LHC's 27 km of tunnels 
The experiment, the largest of its kind in the world, was first switched on with great fanfare in September 2008, but suffered an electrical fault just nine days later. This caused a leak of ultra-cold liquid helium, resulting in severe damage. Repairs have cost approximately £24 million, on top of the £6 billion spent originally.

Particles were injected into the ring at around 1500 GMT on Friday, and just after 1930 GMT the first completed circuit was confirmed. Further testing is planned for Saturday.

"We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way," stated Rolf Heuer, director-general of CERN, the European research group running the collider.

The Large Hadron Collider is designed to smash together particles at almost the speed of light, creating conditions similar to those only moments after the Big Bang. By studying these collisions, scientists hope to shed light on theories such as supersymmetry and the Higgs boson. The six physicists  Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Higgs, Brout, and Englert who predicted this particle in 1964 were recently awarded the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for this work.

Barring further problems, the first collisions are scheduled to take place in January next year.