The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has had something of a troubled time since construction was initially completed. After an electrical fault caused liquid helium to leak into the tunnel that contains the collider last September the schedule to commence particle smashing was set back considerably. However, since the machine was restarted on November 20th it has been smooth sailing. The LHC can now officially be called the highest-energy particle accelerator in the world, after engineers increased the energy of a pilot beam to 1.18 trillion electron volts on Sunday (23:44 GMT). The previous record of 0.98 TeV was held by the Tevatron accelerator in Chicago and if all goes well should be continually improved upon, as the LHC ramps up its energy to an expected seven trillion electron volts. Cern's director general is reportedly happy with progress, though the real celebrations will begin once the serious science begins in 2010.