[Zenith77]

Originally Posted by allenwr I am not only interested in what the machine does, but the fact that the machine worked on their first try amazes me. An aritical I read discussing the Chicago particle accelerator talked about how a neutron went off path and went out a side of the machine causing some damage.

The machine is designed well, to accelerate particles. The difference between this and others is that:

1) It does it at 99% the speed of light.
2) It's designed to read all the data generated during a particle collision at this speed. This data will be used to test our current atomic model.
3) Other tests that can't be done with machines.

Basically recreating conditions millseconds after the Big Bang occured.

And during the test runs today, one the beams released some energy in the ATLAS detector meaning that it did hit something (although nothing major happened), IIRC, but a little bit of calibration fixed it.