Nicholas Vella

What is that?

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Above is an image of the 'CMS Detector' in short for 'Compact Muon Solenoid'. The complete detector is 21 metres long, 15 metres wide and 15 metres high. We were very lucky to go down and see the detector as it had just been finished from repairs and was open again to visitors on the day we went to see it. 

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What does the machine detect?

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Remember in the 'Home section' when I talked about what 'Quarks' and 'Leptons' are? Well, this machine detects one of the 'Lepton' elementary particles known as the 'muon'. This is one of the 6 'Leptons' emitted upon the collision of 2 protons.   The CMS detector is built around a huge solenoid magnet. This takes the form of a cylindrical coil. The field is confined by a steel “yoke” that forms the bulk of the detector’s 14,000-tonne weight.

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Could you explain the above photograph?

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Above is a wide panorama taken using a special photography technique known as 'Photomerging', I used a 50mm lens and with a tripod took 40 shots of the detector all from the same anchor point. I then used photoshop to photomerge the images together to create a wide panoramic effect which we see could see in the image above. Further post production was done to tweak the lens distortion. The Detector was still undergoing repairs and checks in time for its next run in the near future.

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Where is the detector located?

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As seen in the diagram below, we could see it located in the top part of the diagram. It forms part of the 'LHC' as one of its 7 detectors. The 'CMS' is located in an underground cavern at Cessy in France, just across the border from Geneva.