ATLAS
This view is looking at the side of the ATLAS experiment. To orient yourself, think of the experiment as a 7,000-tonne roll of toilet paper. We are looking at the rounded side of the roll. Conveniently, this particular roll of toilet paper can be pulled apart in sections, and we can see some of the inner layers of the roll. The particle beam is like the spring-loaded plastic toilet paper holder, passing through the center of the experiment.
Now that everyone knows my true level of understanding of the most complex physics experiment in existence, let's see if I can confuse you further. For those of you unfamiliar with the particle accelerator, the general idea is that protons are winging around a 27km-diameter ring located 100m underground near Geneva. The protons are moving at close to the speed of light, pushed around the ring as well as held inside the ring by powerful magnets. The goal of this particle accelerator is to cause bunches of protons to collide, preferably in the center of an experiment like ATLAS. The collision at such high energies produces all sorts of interesting sub-atomic particles as the protons break down into their component bits. As all these wee bits explode outward through the various detection layers of the experiment, the physicfolk can decipher what's going on and thereby test their hypotheses.
Back to the image: The ridged silver piece in the left of the image is one of the endcap toroidal magnets surrounding the particle beam. There are a lot of magnets on this puppy. I would not recommend visiting if you have a pacemaker. The magnets exert force on the charged particles created by the proton collisions; they cause the particles to rotate around the particle beam (almost like the sheets of tp around the cardboard center of a tp roll!). These forces are one tool that allow smahht people to measure particle momentum, based on how much those particles' paths are bent by the magnets (more momentum => straighter path). This entire magnet is normally located farther to the left, inside the center of the experiment. The gold-colored plates are one end-cap of the experiment, and are also moved to the left with the magnet when the experiment is running.
I believe the gold-colored plates are muon detectors; they have those things strapped all over the place. Apparently there are LOTS of muons running around.
There are also bigger magnets (!) as well as other types of detectors on the experiment: calorimeters (measure energy of particles), scintillators (scintillating!), and pixel detectors (measure location precisely, located close to the collision point in the experiment) including a fancy new pixel detector (more photos later).
Geneva, Switzerland
March 2014
ATLAS
This view is looking at the side of the ATLAS experiment. To orient yourself, think of the experiment as a 7,000-tonne roll of toilet paper. We are looking at the rounded side of the roll. Conveniently, this particular roll of toilet paper can be pulled apart in sections, and we can see some of the inner layers of the roll. The particle beam is like the spring-loaded plastic toilet paper holder, passing through the center of the experiment.
Now that everyone knows my true level of understanding of the most complex physics experiment in existence, let's see if I can confuse you further. For those of you unfamiliar with the particle accelerator, the general idea is that protons are winging around a 27km-diameter ring located 100m underground near Geneva. The protons are moving at close to the speed of light, pushed around the ring as well as held inside the ring by powerful magnets. The goal of this particle accelerator is to cause bunches of protons to collide, preferably in the center of an experiment like ATLAS. The collision at such high energies produces all sorts of interesting sub-atomic particles as the protons break down into their component bits. As all these wee bits explode outward through the various detection layers of the experiment, the physicfolk can decipher what's going on and thereby test their hypotheses.
Back to the image: The ridged silver piece in the left of the image is one of the endcap toroidal magnets surrounding the particle beam. There are a lot of magnets on this puppy. I would not recommend visiting if you have a pacemaker. The magnets exert force on the charged particles created by the proton collisions; they cause the particles to rotate around the particle beam (almost like the sheets of tp around the cardboard center of a tp roll!). These forces are one tool that allow smahht people to measure particle momentum, based on how much those particles' paths are bent by the magnets (more momentum => straighter path). This entire magnet is normally located farther to the left, inside the center of the experiment. The gold-colored plates are one end-cap of the experiment, and are also moved to the left with the magnet when the experiment is running.
I believe the gold-colored plates are muon detectors; they have those things strapped all over the place. Apparently there are LOTS of muons running around.
There are also bigger magnets (!) as well as other types of detectors on the experiment: calorimeters (measure energy of particles), scintillators (scintillating!), and pixel detectors (measure location precisely, located close to the collision point in the experiment) including a fancy new pixel detector (more photos later).
Geneva, Switzerland
March 2014