Detectors

Six detectors are being constructed at the LHC, located underground in large caverns excavated at the LHC's intersection points. Two of them, the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), are large, general purpose particle detectors. "A Large Ion Collider Experiment" (ALICE) is designed to study the properties of quark-gluon plasma from the debris of heavy-ion collisions. The other three, LHCb, TOTEM, and LHCf, are smaller and more specialized. The BBC's summary of the detectors is:

ATLAS – one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions.

CMS – the other general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter.

ALICE – will study a "liquid" form of matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

LHCb – equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" anti-matter.