First circuit? (Score 1)

I know this is incredibly nitpicky of me, but I would like to point out an interesting aspect of this statement:

Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Even at the supposedly pokey speed of .98 c, the proton stream is whizzing around that thing almost 11000 times per second. That's one complete circuit every 92 microseconds, give or take. The fastest transmission time I could find for a neural synapse was 200 microseconds. By the time their brains had processed "woo," it had probably already made several thousand more loops.

Those protons probably got bored waiting for the engineers to say something. They were all down at the pub getting swizzled before the crew even realized it had worked.