The LHC Olympics

Coinciding with the kickoff of the winter Olympics in Torino, more than 70 physicists gathered at CERN from across the globe for an Olympics of their own on 9-10 February. Their challenge, however, involved brains rather than brawn.

When turned on in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. The machine will send two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 27-km tunnel at close to the speed of light.  When the beams are smashed together, showers of new particles and a possible glimpse at what the universe looked like in its first few moments will be created for physicists to study.

However, interpreting the data produced from the LHC won't be an easy task. This is because the protons themselves are complex, making it difficult to interpret exactly what happens at the fundamental level in each collision. To prepare for the challenge, physicists want to test and improve their ability to decipher the information correctly and efficiently. The LHC Olympics is a coordinated effort to do just that, minus the gold, silver and bronze of the athletic competition.

As part of the LHC Olympic series, teams of theorists from the University of Michigan, Harvard University and the University of Washington set up three mock data sets that could be generated once the accelerator is turned on. The data sets, known as black boxes, were posted online and LHC Olympians were asked to interpret the data, looking for particles and evidence of theories that haven’t yet been witnessed or confirmed.

At the end of the workshop, which included tutorials, lectures, discussions and a chance for participants to report on their progress, solutions to the boxes were revealed. The LHC Olympians had many of the right answers, said University of Michigan physicist Gordy Kane, one of the Olympics organizers. But there's still room for improvement, he said. “The main idea is if you can't do it for the simulated case, it's even less likely you can do it for the real case," Kane said. "It makes people learn to think differently and approach the problem the way it will have to be approached.”

The opportunity for more practice is just around the corner. Unlike the athletes in Torino, the physicists won’t have to wait another four years to prove themselves. They’ll be competing again at the summer LHC Olympics workshop in August.

February 2006