Hi all,

It’s my favorite day of the month – yet another issue of Nature Chemical Biology is available for your viewing pleasure. Our May issue features some interesting stuff, including iron-sulfur clusters, probes for hydrogen peroxide, and ground states of stem cells (yet another tongue twister?).

In addition to the primary research articles, our editorial focuses on collaborations – both how they can help catalyze and elevate research as well as a few cautionary notes for the planning stages. What have you all found to be important considerations in starting a new project with someone, whether they are in your lab, in your department, or a national or international peer? What have you gained from the experiences? As collaborations seem to be central to many current research efforts, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

The Large Hadron Collider is almost complete. London physicists await its opening, while a new exhibition about the accelerator is unveiled at the Science Museum.

Tristan Farrow

Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, opened the Big Bang! exhibition at London’s Science Museum today. The display will give a sneak preview of one of the most important instruments ever built – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The accelerator at CERN, near Geneva, will probe the origins of mass, and replicate conditions from the start of the Universe when it opens in November. Construction work reached a milestone last month after installation of the final quadrupolar magnet.

“When the history of science in these decades is written, then the deeper understanding of fundamental particles will be one of the most important chapters,” predicts Rees. “If the LHC finds absolutely nothing, that would be an amazing surprise!”

Colossus

The LHC comprises four principal particle detectors threaded together by a 27 km ring tunnel. Protons (a type of hadron) or ions are accelerated by superconducting magnets before colliding inside the detectors.

Geoff Hall leads a team from Imperial College London who helped design a calorimeter and triggering electronics for the Compact Muon Solenoid detector. “One of the biggest challenges was to develop electronics that could withstand a very hostile radiation environment not found anywhere on earth except in the centre of nuclear reactors,” he says.

Another detector, dubbed Alice, is “perhaps the more bizarre experiment at CERN,” according to particle physicist Mark Lancaster from University College London. Alice will study quark–gluon plasmas created by smashing together lead ions. Such plasmas were present in the early universe, before coalescing into more familiar particles. Lancaster’s group are helping to develop the worldwide computer Grid that will handle data from the LHC.

Origins of everything

Finding the elusive Higgs boson is the chief goal of the collider. The boson is thought to give mass to other particles. Without it, we would all be massless.

“Most people expect that the LHC will detect the Higgs particle,” says Rees. “But it will be disappointing if that’s all it detects. There are strong reasons for expecting that it will also discover a new class of particles – so-called supersymmetric particles, which are a strong bet for being the ‘dark matter’ in the universe”.

The LHC could also reveal new spatial dimensions. “If gravitons – the particles that transmit the force of gravity – can travel through those extra dimensions, that would dilute gravitational attraction and explain why it is so weak”, explains Antonella De Santo. Her team, based at Royal Holloway’s Centre for Particle Physics, will use data from the LHC’s Atlas detector to search for extra dimensions and supersymmetry.

The Atlas detector. Credit.

Worth the money?

The project isn’t without problems. Last week, three superconducting magnets failed in preliminary tests as they were subjected to asymmetric forces. It remains unclear whether this will cause significant delays or cost overruns. The UK is contributing £70 million each year to the LHC, and by the time it starts delivering results, the multinational cost may reach £5 billion. Will the returns on such expenditure be worth it?

“The LHC is of course a hugely expensive instrument,” admits Rees. “But the best strategy to make progress is to put most of the money into one huge instrument. We are spending rather less than 2 percent of our public budget for our participation in the LHC, and I think that’s entirely appropriate.”

To learn more about the LHC, visit the BIG BANG! exhibition at the Science Museum, from 3 April. Entry is free.