REPRODUCING THE BIG BANG? go ask alice (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) . . . this happens on Wednesday 9-10-08

The first LHC tracks have been seen by the ALICE Experiment !
ALICE, on the evening of 15 June 2008, saw the first tracks at LHC. In fact, the Silicon Pixel detector has seen muon tracks produced in the beam dump during the injection test in transfer line TI 2.

Longitudinal tracks along one or even two ladders of the ALICE Silicon Pixel detector from muons produced during the first LHC beam injection test.

Welcome to ALICE, a journey to the beginning of the Universe.
ALICE is the acronym for A Large Ion Collider Experiment, one of the largest experiments in the world devoted to research in the physics of matter at an infinitely small scale. Hosted at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear Research, this project involves an international collaboration of more than 1000 physicists, engineers and technicians, including around 200 graduate students, from 105 physics institutes in 30 countries across the world. The ALICE Experiment is going in search of answers to fundamental questions, using the extraordinary tools provided by the LHC:

What happens to matter when it is heated to 100,000 times the temperature at the centre of the Sun ?
Why do protons and neutrons weigh 100 times more than the quarks they are made of ?
Can the quarks inside the protons and neutrons be freed ?
This website aims both at introducing non-initiates to the field of physics covered by ALICE and at providing regular information on the evolution of the experiment, with detailed reports of its results and analysis. It also offers an insight into the scientific community gathered around this project and highlights its contributions to the advancement of our understanding of the universe. So, no matter what your involvement with physics, you are invited to tumble down the rabbit hole into the wonderland of ALICE. ---- CREDIT TO http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html