images

LHC: the world's largest time projection chamber

by

M.Brice/C.Marcelloni/ CERN/Novapix

Reference

n-cer04-00001

Date

2009-02-04

Peter Glassel, the technical coordinator for the ALICE time projection chamber, is seen sitting inside the detector; the largest in the world at nearly 100 cubic metres. Thousands of wires are connected to read out electronic data produced as particles are created in lead-lead collisions at the centre of the detector. These particles will cause the medium within the time projection chamber to ionise along their tracks allowing the particle paths to be recreated.