LHSee - Large Hadron Collider app - Big bang science in your pocket

Scientists at the world's biggest scientific experiment - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)at CERN, Geneva - are trying to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the Universe, the origin of mass, the structure of space and time, and the conditions of the early universe. For those of us not lucky enough to have the world's highest energy particle smasher in our own back gardens, we can still get close to the action using an exciting new smartphone App.

The new App, called 'LHSee', makes the LHC accessible to anybody with a smartphone or tablet PC running the Google Android operating system. Written by Oxford University scientists in collaboration with the ATLAS, one of the four LHC experiments at CERN, it has been designed for experts and non-experts alike.

For the first time you can now grab live collision events from the underground detectors in Geneva, and beam them direct to your own device. As well as a variety of educational resources, the application allows you to interact with the collision events in full 3D graphics. You can also find out how the different parts of the detector work, learn how to identify different types of collision, and even put your new skills to the test by playing the 'Hunt the Higgs' game.

Dr Alan Barr of the University of Oxford says: "I love the detail in the live displays - it's amazing to see that you can pick out the different individual proton collisions."

With help from their international friends within the ATLAS collaboration, the developers offer the App with language support not just in English, but also in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.

The App is free to download from the Google Android Marketplace.

Provided by Science and Technology Facilities Council