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1 Dec 2011
A lead-ion event recorded by ALICE early in the 2011 lead-ion run
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has harvested a healthy crop of lead-ion collisions. In the two weeks since the beginning of the 2011 lead-ion run, some 10 times more luminosity (a measure of the number of collisions) has been delivered than in the entire 2010 lead-ion run. Analysis is in full swing for the three experiments gathering lead-ion data: ALICE, ATLAS and CMS. By studying lead-ion data, physicists probe matter as it would have been in the first instants of the Universe's life. One of the main goals is to produce tiny quantities of such matter, known as Quark Gluon Plasma, and to study how it has evolved into the kind of matter that makes up the Universe today.
Note:
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), known as CERN, is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border. Established in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.
The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 full-time employees/workers, as well as some 7931 scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.
More information:
Quantum diaries: Partonic matter and perfect fluidity: it's heavy ions time!: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/11/15/partonic-matter-and-perfect-fluidity-it%E2%80%99s-heavy-ions-time/
CERN Bulletin: Leading lead through the LHC: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2011/43/News%20Articles/1392094?ln=en
ALICE public site: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html
Image, Text, Credit: CERN.
Cheers, Orbiter.ch
