4 Years at CERN with the LHC - A Scientific and Human Adventure

par Sarah Porteboeuf-Houssais (LPC)

vendredi 26 sept. 2025, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Paris

Amphi Recherche

The quark-gluon plasma is a state of matter in which the building blocks of an atom’s nucleus, quarks and gluons, are no longer confined. It behaves like a very hot and dense fluid with collective properties, studied in high-energy collisions of heavy atomic nuclei, like lead, conducted in particle accelerators such as the CERN LHC.

In scientific talks, we often focus on the measurements and results obtained from data collected during these particle collisions by experiments such as ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). But we rarely discuss how that data is actually collected. In 2020, I moved to CERN to work directly alongside the LHC and the ALICE experiment, gaining hands-on experience with the reality of large-scale scientific instrumentation. I was originally meant to stay two years. I stayed four. Because when you embark on a journey into uncharted territory, the adventure sometimes turns out to be bigger than expected … This seminar will share both the scientific and human dimensions of the beginning of data-taking at the CERN LHC.