The LHC: A Large Machine for Small Scales [Gallery]

The classical picture along the magnets in the LHC main tunnel. The blue pipe is a dipole magnet.

One of the large masses that acts as the LHC beam dump.

The LHC control room with its four islands arranged as a cloverleaf.

As I say in the text: maybe the highest concentration of screens I have ever seen.

The legendary picture into ATLAS with its eight magnet coils clearly visible.

Another view of ATLAS, with some of its inner layers pulled out.

Front view of CMS. The beam pipe is clearly visible.

Another view of CMS and the beam pipe.

CMS' tracker, pulled out

ATLAS pixel detector during reinsertion after maintenance in December 2013

Detail view of the pixel detector in CMS.

From afar, these detectors just look like a colorful surface. When you look more closely, you can detect a lot of details, lots of complexity.

The core of CMS; the beam pipe travels inside the spacecraft-shaped cone. The "spacecraft" is only visible because this picture was taken during maintenance work.

The red "boxes" are the muon system of CMS.

This is the "non-descript building" I talked about in my introduction. It hosts the access shaft down to ALICE, the elevator and a crane, plus the control room. The painting of ALICE is 1:1 scale.

This picture was taken from inside the ALICE cavern, looking up through the access shaft. ALICE is only around 50 meters below ground, some of the other experiments are deeper down. Note the yellow overhead crane.

This is a view along the beamline towards ALICE; the beam passes under the platform I am standing on. The red "box" is the magnet, you can see the two main doors are open for maintenance.

The skeleton of ALICE. Several of the inner layers have been completely removed, as have some of the modules of the calorimeters. At the very far end of the hollow space you can see the beam pipe.

This shows the space beneath ALICE. Cables and electronics everywhere.

Some of the end plate detectors; the beam pipe is clearly visible in the center.

A tape robot that is part of the data storage facility in the computing grid.