science meets beauty

“Analyzing data !” Most of us would probably think about huge computer centers, filled up to the roof with high tech equipment. Not so long ago data analysis for a particle physicist meant carefully studying huge photographs, showing the traces of hundreds of particles.

The core component of CERN, the huge circular accelerator with its 27 km circumference is still the same. 11.000 times per second a bunch of particles is making its way around.
Here indicated by a few red LEDs.

Meanwhile the tunnel is filled with several thousand beam pipe sections forming the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider. Two antidromic high intensity particle beams with just the diameter of one’s little finger are interacting in four different points around the ring. Each of these underground caverns is filled with a dedicated purpose particle detector, aiming at answering the big questions of scientists today: What happend a fraction of a second after the Big Bang ? Can we describe all phenomena using one great unified theory ? Can we detect the famous Higgs Boson ?

Detecting and reconstructing the particle trajectories is the common feature of all the high energy physics experiments at CERN. Thousands of ultra fine metallic wires form a matrix which allowed to reconstruct particle trajectories in space in this multiwire proportional chamber.

Not only scientists, also artists from all over the world are fascinated and feel inspired. Photographers, too ….