At its 153rd session today, the CERN1 Council heard that the Large Hadron Collider ended its first full period of operation in style on Wednesday 16 December. Collisions at 2.36TeV recorded since last weekend have set a new world record and brought to a close a successful first run for the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC has now been put into standby mode, and will restart in February 2010 following a short technical stop to prepare for higher energy collisions and the start of the main research programme.