Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

I just spoke with Judy Jackson, head of Fermilab's Office of Communication. She was wearing orange and blue pajamas.

"Well, I could go home and get some sleep," I said, "or I could blog."

"You should blog," Judy said. Predictable, but then I did open my big mouth.

Fermilab held a pajama party to watch beam go around the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. It's Wednesday daytime at CERN, but here the celebration started at 01:30. About 400 people showed up in the Wilson Hall atrium. We had a video link to CERN, where they're staging an even bigger event.



Fermilab is deeply involved in the LHC, as are other American national laboratories and universities. A remote operations center for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment has been built here. I imagine that pajamas will not often be worn there again.

There was speechmaking. I talked to various interesting people. The 450 GeV proton beam was brought to internal collimators at various points around the LHC, one segment at a time. At about 03:15 (Illinois time) they got the protons all the way around one ring. A hearty breakfast was served. As is traditional with new accelerators, a champagne toast was also drunk. I imagine that physicists are signing a bottle right now at CERN. There was more speechmaking. People who wore pajamas to the event were invited to pose for a group picture.

Okay, Judy, now I'm going home to nap.