As i’m sure you all know by now the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is about to arrive in all it’s glory (and if you don’t, i refer you to an excellent video-explanation of it mentioned in a previous post). Set to kick off in July, the scientists are in full crunch mode to get all bells and whistles ready for the demolition of the world as we know it by creating a black-hole.

One of the major experiments in the LHC, is the so called ALICE experiment (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), which will, as the name suggests, study the collision of large ions, such as two lead ions colliding head on. In order to get data from these massively energetic collisions, they need some kind of measurement device to see how the particles coming out of it are flying around, and the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main particle tracking device in ALICE.

The chamber is filled with a gas that gets ionized (loses an electron) when the particles pass through it, leaving a trail behind that the detectors can measure. These detectors however, need to be very finely calibrated to get the best measurements possible, and that is what the scientists are working on now. Using a finely tuned laser to ionize the gas and shining it on mirrors very carefully placed throughout the chamber, they effectively simulate a particle trail, allowing for the first measurements on the finished system to be made. The results from these measurements are then used to finely calibrate the equipment, to have it all in tip-top shape for the big day. To quote Børge Svane Nielsen, the leader of the Danish research group from the Niels Bohr Institute:

We were very happy, when we managed to measure the first traces. It’s an important step and it shows that the detector system is working.

Original article here (sorry, only in Danish), courtesy of the Niels Bohr Institute (University of Copenhagen).