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Nature Physics 5, 782 (1 November 2009) | doi:10.1038/nphys1450

Particle physics: Environmental concerns

Alison Wright

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will fire up again this month, with its three detectors, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, poised to begin close monitoring of the proton–proton collisions in pursuit of such novelties as supersymmetry and the Higgs boson. Also part of the programme are 'heavy ion' collisions — using the LHC to collide lead ions instead of protons, in the hope of creating quark–gluon plasma — for which a dedicated detector called ALICE has been built.