ATLAS Experiment
Coordinates: 46°14′8″N 6°3′19″E / 46.23556°N 6.05528°E / 46.23556; 6.05528
ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) is one of the seven particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, LHCf and MoEDAL) constructed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. It might shed light on new theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
ATLAS is 45 metres long, 25 metres in diameter, and weighs about 7,000 tons. The experiment is a collaboration involving roughly 3,000 physicists at 175 institutions in 38 countries. The project was led for the first 15 years by Peter Jenni and since 2009 has been headed by Fabiola Gianotti. It was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson in July 2012.
Read more about ATLAS Experiment: History, Background, Physics Program, Components, Data Systems and Analysis
Famous quotes containing the words atlas and/or experiment:
“A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)