The latest ATLAS news http://atlas.ch/news/ [May, 2011] - String Theory predicts a new symmetry, called "supersymmetry", that could shed light on some of today's mysteries of fundamental particles and interactions. In supersymmetry, every particle-type should have a "shadow" particle called a super-partner that (in general) has a much higher mass. The ATLAS Experiment has analyzed the first year of its LHC data and searched for evidence of these super-partners of ordinary matter... More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2011/is-nature-supersymmetric.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2011/is-nature-supersymmetric.html [March, 2010] - The first physics results from the ATLAS Experiment with proton-proton collisions at an energy of 0.9 TeV in late 2009 have now been accepted for publication in the journal Physics Letters B. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2010/first-physics.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2010/first-physics.html [November, 2009] - A few days ago, loud cheers and happy faces filled the ATLAS Control Room while the whole detector lit up: protons are back at the experiment's door, and everybody forgot in a second the long year of waiting for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to resume operation. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/first-collisions-in-ATLAS.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/first-collisions-in-ATLAS.html [November, 2009] - Loud cheers and happy faces fill the ATLAS Control Room while the whole detector lights up: protons are back today at the experiment's door, and everybody forgets in a second the long year of waiting for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to resume operation. More... http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR18.09E.html http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR18.09E.html [Feburary, 2009] - On 9 February 2009, CERN announced a new schedule for the LHC that envisions collisions in late October 2009 with an almost continuous run until autumn 2010. This is exciting news for ATLAS and the other experiments. It means that within a year’s horizon ATLAS will have substantial data allowing full physics analyses and even a possibility of new discoveries. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/preparing-for-collisions.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/preparing-for-collisions.html [May, 2009] - A new multimedia contest has been set up to put talented young filmmakers and science communicators in touch with ATLAS. The contest was conceived by ATLAS photographer Claudia Marcelloni and engineer Neal Hartman. The rules of the contest have been left deliberately vague, to avoid influencing the creative direction of the entrants. “We have very little description about what the multimedia should be,” says Claudia, stipulating only that, “We’re aiming high … I really expect to be surprised.” More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/multimedia-contest.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/multimedia-contest.html [May, 2009] - CERN was in the spotlight again on Thursday April 30th, when a segment about the LHC aired on American comedy news show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. CERNois are used to tough questions; those they ask themselves and each other, those they get from interested family and friends, and those that are thrown at them by the media. But according to well-known CERN theorist John Ellis, his grilling at the hands of comedy character John Oliver was the trickiest interview he has ever done. “It was quite an experience,” he summarises of his time spent fielding questions such as ‘Why do you want to destroy the Earth?’ and ‘Do you even know what a Kelvin is?’. John Ellis was the picture of composure, and admits, “I was prepared to be asked some outlandish questions,” having spent time watching science features from the program’s archives. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/daily-show.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/daily-show.html [April, 2009] - On Friday, March 13th, British high school student Jonathan Higgs discovered the elusive Higgs boson among the simulated particle tracks in Minerva – a special form of ATLAS’s event display program, Atlantis, designed for students in the International Particle Physics Masterclasses. While he didn’t earn a Nobel Prize for his find students who performed well won t-shirts, decks of cards, and other rewards. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/higgs-finds-higgs.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/higgs-finds-higgs.html [March, 2009] - If you want insight into the lives of graduate students, look no further than Jorge Cham’s Piled Higher and Deeper comic series, detailing the trials and tribulations of earning a PhD. He brought his well-honed observational humour to CERN, meeting with a few graduate students and post-docs for a slice of life at the world’s largest physics experiment. More... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/comic-takes-on-cern.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/comic-takes-on-cern.html [Feburary, 2009] - ATLAS got a little taste of Tinseltown on February 12th, as director Ron Howard, and actors Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer rolled into town to promote their new film – an adaption of Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels and Demons. “It’s not usual for CERN to be colliding with Hollywood,” joked CERN’s Director of Research, Sergio Bertolucci, addressing a crowd of 170 entertainment journalists from all over the world who were packed into the Globe for an exclusive screening of 8.5 minutes of the new film. At the press conference that followed, Director Ron Howard, who was sporting a CERN cap, took a photograph of himself as he took to the stage in the Globe so that he could “remember [the] moment forever”. The stars of his film clearly shared in his excitement. “I love seeing science fiction becoming science fact – and I can tell you, it looks like a bunch of nuts and bolts and pipes,” said Hanks, who had toured the ATLAS cavern earlier in the day. “It’s incredibly exciting,” he added. “Magic isn’t happening here, magic is being explained here.” http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/tinseltown-visit.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/tinseltown-visit.html [Feburary, 2009] - Twenty-eight-year-old Josef Kristofoletti is a traveling artist. On the site documenting the work of his group, transitantenna.com, he writes: “I am taking a survey of American mural painting in all of its forms, looking for the best pictures across the land, and painting some along the way.” One of these paintings is an image of the ATLAS detector, a 13 x 7 metre mural on the side of the Redux Contemporary Art Center in South Carolina, entitled “Angel of the Higgs Boson”. When people on the street commented on the impressive scale of the painting, Josef would modestly reply, “Well, it's a small drawing of something that is much, much bigger.” http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/a-wall-atlas.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/a-wall-atlas.html [Feburary, 2009] - On 9 February 2009, CERN announced a new schedule for the LHC that envisions collisions in late October 2009 with an almost continuous run until autumn 2010. This is exciting news for ATLAS and the other experiments. It means that within a year’s horizon ATLAS will have substantial data allowing full physics analyses and even a possibility of new discoveries. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/preparing-for-collisions.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/preparing-for-collisions.html [Feburary, 2009] - Adventurer Bear Grylls, Knife Thrower Todd Abrams, Latin Singer Juanes, Tennis Player Rafael Nadal… What do all these men have in common? They all appear in USA-based People Magazine’s A-Z of sexiest men in the world, along with none other than ATLAS’s own Professor Brian Cox. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/sexiest-physicist.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/sexiest-physicist.html [January, 2009] - Over Christmas, we followed the progress of ATLAS collaborator, Katharine Leney, as she and her boyfriend Pierre drove across Europe and Africa in a beaten up second hand car, to raise money for development charities working in Africa. Katharine Leney and her boyfriend Pierre officially reached their destination – Timbuktu – on the afternoon of January 5th. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/wanderer-returns.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2009/wanderer-returns.html [November, 2008] - Four million viewings will rock us in the head.  Who would imagine that a Rap about LHC would be watched by four million people?  ATLAS' own Katie McAlpine (with a little help from her friends) produced this quirky rap about the LHC and its experiments... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/rock-you-in-the-head.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/rock-you-in-the-head.html [October, 2008] - Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the LHC tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty... http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR14.08E.html http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR14.08E.html [September 20, 2008] - ATLAS is not affected and continues to take cosmic-ray data to commission and tune the detector, awaiting further developments. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/ http://public.web.cern.ch/public/ [September 10, 2008] - ATLAS experimenters celebrated today as the first beams circulated the Large Hadron Collider in both directions. While everyone was cheering in the LHC control room, the cheers were echoed in the ATLAS and other control rooms, and in several auditoriums around CERN. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/first-beam-and-event.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/first-beam-and-event.html [June 2008] - Strangers photographing the ATLAS detector are a familiar sight for those working down in the pit. But last month, things were a little bit different: the detector was being photographed in preparation for its Hollywood debut in the dramatisation of Dan Brown’s best-seller Angels and Demons. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/ATLAS-gets-hollywood-treatment.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/ATLAS-gets-hollywood-treatment.html [June 2008] - Building the ATLAS detector has been a mammoth and innovative project. Sociologists, economists, and entrepreneurs have studied how such projects benefit society and the economy. The ATLAS collaboration has a number of unique characteristics, because of the size of the project, together with its complex scientific nature. It is the largest collaborative effort ever attempted in the physical sciences with more than 2200 physicists from 38 countries. http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/perspectives-on-ATLAS.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/perspectives-on-ATLAS.html [June 2008] - The search for exotic particle has led Alan Litke and his ATLAS colleagues to design a system that has allowed the discovery of a new type of cell in the retina of primates, and this technology is helping to find solutions for certain types of blindness... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/possible-solutions-for-blindness.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/possible-solutions-for-blindness.html [June 2008] - German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel made a historic visit to CERN at the end of last month. During her brief 1.5 hours on site, she was taken on a whistle-stop tour of the ATLAS control room and cavern, and given the chance to look down on the largest particle physics experiment in the world from a dizzying height of 100 metres through the access shaft which links the massive underground cavern to the surface... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/chancellor-merkel-visits-atlas.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/chancellor-merkel-visits-atlas.html [May 2008] - They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but how would recent attempts in a Hawaiian court to stop the opening of the LHC because of safety concerns affect the general public’s perception of CERN? The Open Day on 5-6 April gave the ATLAS Collaboration a chance to find out... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/interest-in-atlas.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/interest-in-atlas.html The ATLAS collaboration is continuously expanding, and recently its message has reached new shores – South America. Three new countries, Argentina, Chile and Colombia joined the collaboration at the beginning of the year, when Peter Jenni, ATLAS spokesperson, signed collaboration agreements formalising the presence of the Latin American research teams within the ATLAS experiment. “These South American groups have been working on ATLAS for many years now, so this is the official and well-deserved recognition of their hard work” says George Mikenberg, an Argentinean physicist on ATLAS who has made lots of personal efforts to forge the collaboration with his homeland... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/ATLAS-strengthens-collaboration.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/ATLAS-strengthens-collaboration.html The anticipation on site in Switzerland is tangible as the final steps in the construction of the ATLAS detector get underway, ahead of the LHC switch-on later this year. But whilst all the hard work is going on down in the pit, a small team of people are toiling equally hard to bring that sense of excitement and wonder out into the wider world, and throw open a window onto what will be the biggest experiment in the history of human kind... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/webhits.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/webhits.html Celebrations are underway in the ATLAS Experiment, as the final element of the detector was lowered into the cavern on Friday February 29th, 2008... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/jigsaw-puzzle.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/jigsaw-puzzle.html It could be a scene from a James Bond movie. But this action shot of two intrepid rappellers (abseilers) was in fact taken in the ATLAS experimental cavern one night in December. François Butin, the ATLAS experimental area manager, tells the story behind the photograph... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/rappellers.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/rappellers.html The cables within the ATLAS detector may be thought of as the blood vessels and nervous system of the experiment; they carry power to the detector, they deliver messages to control its functions and they relay the data taken, ready for analysis... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/blood-vessels-of-ATLAS.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2008/blood-vessels-of-ATLAS.html The magnets on either end of the ATLAS detector (called end–cap toroid magnets) dominated November’s work in the experimental cavern... http://www.atlas.ch/news/2007/progress-on-magnets.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2007/progress-on-magnets.html “By doing this test, we’re trying to practice everything — from data coming off the experiment right through to it being shipped around and analysed — under conditions just as they will be when real data–taking begins...” http://www.atlas.ch/news/2007/dress-rehearsal.html http://www.atlas.ch/news/2007/dress-rehearsal.html