ALICE A L arge I on C ollider E xperiment at the LHC

The Big Bang… At the root of all matter there are quarks, held together by “gluons” A millionth of a second after the big bang, all the matter was squeezed into a small space, around 300m wide In this hot dense environment, strong force was too low to hold the quarks together The quarks and gluons were free, in a new kind of matter called “quark-gluon plasma”

What happened next? After seconds, the plasma cooled, particles began to form and everything expanded out with a lot of energy! ALICE and the “mini-fireball” ALICE collides Pb ions which have been accelerated to 99% of the speed of light, so they hit each other with very high energies! But how can scientists see the QGP behind all the particles?

ALICE uses the Solenoid Magnet from LEP: 14 metres high, each door weighs 350 tonnes! The ALICE detector Torroidal Magnet – Europe’s Biggest! Time Projection Chamber – The biggest ever built! Lead Tungstate Crystals for the Silicon Vertex Tracker The ALICE detector in construction: Outside: The Large Solenoid Magnet with Muon Detectors sandwiched in between the layers of iron Middle layer: Torroidal magnet Centre of the detector: Calorimeters, Trackers and Vertex Detectors

That’s all from me! All images not drawn or taken by me were taken from ALICE Public Pages: Have a look there for more information!