CERN - A team of scientists have put the final piece of equipment, a Vertex Locator called VELO, into a 27 km long supercollider.  Designed to probe the very workings of the universe, and specifically to measure b-quarks, the extremely fragile VELO was finally put into place without breaking any of its 84 delicate components, each which would've required 1,000 hours to replace.  The stage is now set for the beauty experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will involve 663 scientists from 47 universities, to begin early in 2008.



 
 
VELO is a very expensive, very fragile detector with 84 half-moon shaped internal silicon sensors, each connected to its share of 5,000 bond wires.  These sensors are moved to within 5 mm of the target area where the collisions will take place when in operation.  They can be retracted to a distance of 35 mm for other undisclosed purposes.

Installing VELO was apparently a very nerve-racking experience.  Eddy Jans, VELO installation coordinator, said, "The installation was very tricky, because we were sliding the VELO blindly in the detector.  These modules are so fragile, we could have damaged them all and not realized it straight away."  However, after many long hours of careful work by the several universities working together on the assembly, the job was done and there was no damage.

A scientist from the University of Glasgow who was responsible for the team testing the modules, Dr Chris Parkes, said, "Now that the VELO is in place we can start work on testing the instrument in situ in the lead up to science operations next year."


 
 
A laundry list of universities are involved in this project, including scientists from University of Liverpool, University of Glasgow, the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, members of astronomy, particle physics, particle astrophysics, nuclear physics, space science, synchrotron radiation, neutron sources and high power lasers, including the laboratories of The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, The Daresbury Laboratory in Chesire, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, as well as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), The European organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) and the European Space Agency (ESA).  Additional operations in Australia, Chile, the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility and Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory.  Parts for the VELO were designed and built all around the world.  The investment in this project exceeded 678 million Euros.