The world's largest particle accelerator has tasted its first protons.

On 8 August, physicists injected a few billion protons into a section of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The accelerator will eventually drive trillions of protons into each other at energies high enough to perhaps generate new kinds of particles.

The small beam tested the synchronization between the LHC and a booster accelerator. “I must say I was very pleased,” says Lyn Evans, LHC project leader at CERN. “It went extremely smoothly.”

Further tests will be carried out in coming weeks, with a view to having protons running laps around the 27-kilometre LHC ring by 10 September.