Birmingham scientists have a smashing time with the Large Hadron Collider

Dec 14 2009 By Victoria Farncombe

Victoria Farncombe speaks to the Birmingham team involved in processing the data gleaned from the world’s biggest atom-smasher at CERN in Switzerland.

Less than three weeks ago, in an underground tunnel 100metres below Switzerland, scientists working on the Big Bang experiment made a giant leap forward in their bid to understand the origins of the universe by colliding particles at record energies.

At this stage, the results are not particularly headline grabbing. It’s next February when the atoms are set to be smashed together at a much higher energy in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that the biggest questions in science may finally be answered.

But, closer to home, it was a proud moment for research students at the University of Birmingham who have played such an integral role in collating the data.

To understand their involvement, it helps to untangle the structure at the European Organisation of Nuclear Research (CERN) which is home to the LHC.

Put simply, there are four machines located at strategic points along the LHC which record what happens when the particles collide. While each of the machines do roughly the same thing, each has a speciality and each uses slightly different technology.

Birmingham students created key electronic components for both ALICE, the machine involved in understanding how the world began and, to a lesser extent, ATLAS, which has been designed to detect dark matter and extra dimensions.

So far, the experiments have only been performed at relatively low energies to make sure everything is in working order.

Even so, when the protons were first whizzed into each other on November 23, there was an in-house race to see which team could publish its results first.

And, thanks mainly to the hard work of students at Birmingham who worked through the night to analyse the data, it was ALICE who pipped the other three to the post.

Dr David Evans, who is heading up the Birmingham operation and is a member of the ALICE board, said: “There’s friendly rivalry at CERN and we wanted to be first. My students worked round the clock to do that, so I’m rather proud. We’re leading the way. It’s round one to ALICE.”

The ALICE collaboration involves more than 1,000 scientists from 94 institutes in 28 countries. Although the Birmingham team is only 15 strong, because it designed the ‘electronic brain’ of ALICE, it has liaised with every single other group there, spreading the university’s reputation for building high-tech electronics across the globe.

“It’s put Birmingham on the map,” explained Dr Evans. “There’s 1,000 people in ALICE. If you ask them have you heard of Birmingham, they’ll say, ‘Yes, they built the trigger.’

“Everyone knows us. Our reputation is spreading.

“Nationally, it works for us too because we’re the only UK university involved in ALICE. So if something good happens, we get the credit.”