The construction of the largest scientific project in the world is nearing completion with the participation of two professors from the Technion

Technion researchers participate in the construction of "Atlas" - a huge detector, part of the largest accelerator in the world. 1,700 physicists from 150 universities in 30 countries participate in the construction of the detector. 

In the photo: Professor Shlomit Terem and the "Atlas".

 Professor Shlomit Terem and Professor Yoram Rosen from the Faculty of Physics at the Technion are participating in the construction of "Atlas" - a huge detector that will be an important part of the largest accelerator in the world, which is being built near Geneva. Together with them, about 1,700 physicists from 150 universities in 30 countries participate in the construction of the detector. The construction of the accelerator and detector is about to be completed at the end of the year.
The circumference of the LHC particle accelerator is 27 kilometers and the energy it will be able to give to each collision between two particle beams (protons) will be seven times higher than any energy produced in any accelerator so far.

The accelerator resides 100 meters underground and its electricity consumption is the same as that consumed by the entire city of Geneva. The accelerator will bring the proton beams into collision at four points along its circumference. Detectors are built at these points which will measure the results of the collision. "Atlas" is the largest of the four and rises to the height of an eight-story building. Both the detector and the accelerator are currently in the final stages of their construction, and they will begin their work at the end of the year. This is 40 million collisions per second, every second, for 10-15 years.
"The accelerator will accelerate the particles to very high energies, almost the speed of light, and cause them to collide. In the collision, using E=MC2, heavy particles will be created, which currently do not exist in nature", explain the Technion researchers. "These particles existed right after the big bang but they decayed immediately, because of their gravity. There are four forces in nature: gravitational force (attraction), electromagnetic force, weak force and strong force. The first two are familiar to all of us in everyday life while the other two are more familiar to scientists. The particles that will be created in the collision, decay according to these four forces. Tracking the way the particles decay will teach us about the laws of nature."
The detector that the Technion researchers are participating in building surrounds the area of ​​the collisions, and will measure them. It must identify very quickly, within 25 nanoseconds, if one has more than 40 million collisions per second - an interest for particle research. The scientists will record the 100 more interesting collisions every second so that they can be further studied. "The information that this accelerator will provide would require a million hard drives, like the ones we know, every second. That's why we need a 'trigger', which is part of the detector that will filter this information for us. We are building this part, in collaboration with scientists from the Weizmann Institute and Tel Aviv University." The detector panels were manufactured at the Weizmann Institute and tested at the Technion. Each board has thin electrical wires, each 50 microns thick, and they are gold plated. The total area of ​​the detector being built in Israel is about six dunams and the total length of the electric wires in it is the circumference of the earth. In each of the boards is an electronic circuit built in the Faculty of Physics at the Technion, and in total there are 1,500 circuits. The circuit controls and monitors the activity of the detector. For example, if the circuit detects a broken wire in the detector, it can be disabled without access to the detector. "It is possible that next year we will observe phenomena that will completely change our perception of the world, and if not - in 15 years we will have a good picture of the structure of matter in nature and will know better the compromise of the four forces in nature", the Technion researchers add. "It is possible that the particle map we know today will change beyond recognition thanks to the knowledge we will gain from the atlas. We will also learn about a phenomenon called CP Violation, which may be responsible for the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe, and in other words - maybe we will know better why we are all in this universe."
The enormous cost of the accelerator and its detectors, billions of dollars, is shared by all project participants. "Everything is done there with full consensus and international cooperation," say the Technion researchers. "Generations of students are being educated about the experiment and will be educated both in designing and building detectors and in analyzing the results. Students and paid students from the physics faculty at the Technion sometimes travel there with cash and even stay there for extended periods. In the large laboratory, named after CERN, there are dormitories and restaurants designed for researchers who come from all over the world. 6,000 people enter the site every day and the atmosphere is very international. The Technion researchers have an important position in the project and during the last ten years that we have been participating in it, many international business and working relationships have been created."