Final Pieces of the CMS Puzzle

The last and arguably highest-tech detector elements are, this week, being installed into the giant CMS experiment at CERN: the pixel detectors. After these detectors are installed, there remains only the beam conditions monitor, a small device, and then the experiment can be buttoned up in anticipation of the first circulating proton beams, hopefully in August. Nearly the entire LHC machine is cold - superconducting cold - and so at long last it seems that we may soon see the first data. Rumor has it that there can be first protons circulating by August 9 (a week from Saturday!) but I bet it will take a bit longer. There will be a many-week shakedown process before "ramping" the beams to high energy. This year, if all goes well, it it foreseen to ramp to 10 TeV total collision energy; the design energy is 14 TeV and that will happen next ...