The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has achieved its goals for 2010 and embarked on a new phase of activity which will see scientists probe the kind of matter that existed just after the Big Bang.

For the past seven months, scientists working on the LHC at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) have been studying collisions between protons. Their main goal was to achieve a 'luminosity' (a measure of the collision rate) of 10 to the power of 32 per square centimetre per second, something they managed on 13 October, 2 weeks ahead of schedule. This proton phase of the experiment ended on 4 November.

The LHC has already started its next phase of activity, which involves smashing lead ions into each other at record energies in a bid to recreate the kinds of conditions that existed in the first moments of the Universe's existence.

The first collisions between lead ions have already taken place, to the excitement of scientists working on the ALICE experiment - one of four experiments running at the LHC.

Another success for the LHC is the way the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) coped with the immense amounts of data generated during the proton-running phase of the experiment. The WLCG draws on the computing power of over 140 computer centres worldwide to support the experiments at the LHC. The system handles over a million computing jobs per day, and data transfer rates have reached 10 gigabytes (the equivalent of 2 whole DVDs of data) per second.

The lead-ion experiments now taking place at the LHC will pose new challenges for the WLCG, as they will generate a greater flow of data than the proton-proton collisions. Tests have demonstrated that CERN's data storage system should be able to cope with this data flow.

The lead ion experiments are scheduled to run until 6 December, when the LHC will shut down for maintenance. It will start working again in February with a return to proton collisions.