“These drift chambers are 18-foot-long aluminum tubes about one-inch in diameter,” Neal explained. ATLAS and CMS are the two major particle detectors which will be installed inside the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.Īccording to Neal, scientists from U-M and six other universities will design and build key components called the muon spectrometer drift chambers.

Neal and six members of the U-M physics department, along with hundreds of other scientists worldwide, will be part of the ATLAS collaboration.

“Since U-M faculty helped plan and design experiments for the Superconducting Supercollider before the project was cancelled, it’s only natural that we would be involved in the European Supercollider.” Neal, U-M interim president emeritus and vice president emeritus for research, who is directing U-M involvement in the project. “In 2005, the frontier of high-energy physics most likely will be in Geneva,” said Homer A. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Funding for the project is being provided by the U.S. Two international scientific teams will design and build two massive particle detectors for use in the LHC. 8 to help fund the Large Hadron Collider-a 16-mile-circumference particle accelerator under construction at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). Officials from Europe and the United States signed an agreement on Dec. ANN ARBOR-Seven years from now when the world’s most powerful particle accelerator begins smashing protons together in an underground tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland, scientists will be able to “see” the collisions, thanks to a sensitive particle detector built in part by University of Michigan physicists.

Eu funding of the large hadron collider