April 20, 2006 Source: :
http://communications.uvic.ca/releases/release.php?display=release&id=717 UVic Physicists Probe the Origin of the Universe The biggest science experiment in history is currently underway in Switzerland and researchers at the University of Victoria are playing a critical part. Since its inception in 1992, UVic physics professor Michel Lefebvre has been instrumental in organizing Canada’s participation in the ATLAS project, the particle detector component of a massive new proton collider facility being built in Switzerland by the world-famous Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN. In addition, Lefebvre led a $4.2-million project to design and build a key part of the ATLAS detector. ATLAS-Canada now consists of 80 scientists from 10 institutions, including UVic. Data produced by the ATLAS project at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be filtered, analyzed and stored at the new Vancouver-based ATLAS Data Centre, which received $10.5 million funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) this week. The LHC will be the most powerful and sophisticated particle accelerator in the world, capable of reproducing ‘Big Bang’ like conditions by smashing particles together that have been accelerated to velocities just shy of the speed of light. A central part of the LHC facility will be the ATLAS detector, an instrument engineered to measure the after effects of those collisions, information that will allow physicists to study nature at its most basic level. "ATLAS will give us a chance to examine the most fundamental building blocks of nature in the most fundamental of ways," says Lefebvre. "For a scientist to try and extract the secrets of nature in this way is very exciting, especially since it’s so intimately connected to the beginnings of the universe." The ATLAS Data Centre will be housed at TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics in Vancouver, which is owned and operated by a consortium of Canadian universities. Installation will begin this summer, with full-scale testing slated to begin in the early fall. For more information about the ATLAS Project at UVic, go to http://particle.phys.uvic.ca/~web-atlas/ Lefebvre is this year’s winner of the UVic’s Craigdarroch Silver Medal for Excellence in Research --30-- Media Contacts:
Dr. Michel Lefebvre (Physics and Astronomy) at (250) 721-7706 or lefebvre@uvic.ca
Dr. Robert A. McPherson (Physics and Astronomy /TRIUMF) at (604) 222 - 7654
or rmcphers@triumf.ca
Maria Lironi (UVic Communications) at (250) 721-6139 or lironim@uvic.ca
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