LHC “First Beam”

On Friday the LHC accelerator folk succeeded in injecting a proton beam into the LHC and taking it from Point 2 to Point 3 (one eighth the way around).  I believe this is the first beam in the LHC proper – they’ve put beam into the injection lines before, but not into the ring.  From what I can find they got it to work on the first try.  A promising sign of things to come?  (We are promised a beam all the way around on September 10.)

An actual Higgs limit

News from ICHEP: Matt Herndon presented a new Tevatron combined limit for Higgs production.  Thanks to a lot of hard work, good luminosity, and a bit of luck on D0’s part, CDF+D0 now exclude a Standard Model Higgs at 170 GeV at exactly 95% confidence level.  (Note: not at 165 or 175.  It’s a very small exclusion window.)  The talk will be available later in the evening.

UPDATE: as promised, available here (Sun 15:30).