After decades of planning, design and construction, the world's largest man-made experiment has begun at the European test Facility for particle physics in Geneva, CERN.

The first collisions between protons in the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, with an energy four times higher than the previous record, were observed in March. It is planned that the experiments should continue their observations almost uninterrupted all the way into 2012. At that time, it is expected to have gathered enough data for the Higgs particle to be found and for it to be possible to find Super symmetrical particles. The Higgs particle is supposed to be responsible for that almost all other particles have mass. The Super symmetrical particles ensure that the Standard Model predictions do not become unnatural, for example, by the Higgs particle itself getting too much mass.

The lecture introduces the Standard Model of particle physics, its strengths and weaknesses, and some of the theoretical ideas that can make the model usable by all energies.

Based on the ATLAS experiment, the experimental methods and the results obtained during the first six months are reviewed.