CERN has announced that the first injection of particles into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will occur between 9:00 and 10:00 Wednesday, September 10th, 2008. Fears of spurious black hole formation have been discounted. The final synchronization was a success. Safety has been reiterated.
This is big time science, man. While in Geneva you won’t be able to spit without hitting a particle physicist.
How do they keep the superconducting magnets chilled? Air Liquide was selected to provide the liquid helium supply to maintain the 1.8 K operating temperature of the magnets over the 27 km length of the LHC.
According to CERN, the cool down phase of LHC preparation required 10,000 tonnes of liquid nitrogen and 130 tonnes of liquid helium to fill the 8 magnet sectors.
The peak beam parameters are quite interesting. Check out this link to PhD Comics.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
They are going to create a black hole which will consume the earth. I just know it.
I’m amazed by the length of the vacuum chamber. I remember my wife sweating over a 2m chamber in grad school – how do you keep a 27 km chamber from leaking?
Air Liquide claims that they only had 10 leaks.