Seven elements of the High Momentum Particle Identification Detector are set up on a platform before insertion inside ALICE’s octogonal magnet structure. Image courtesy of CERN

ALICE, A Large Ion Collider Experiment, is one of five experiments preparing to receive data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN starting in 2008. ALICE is a nuclear physics experiment built to study the nature of the quark-gluon plasma. Scientists consider the quark-gluon plasma to be a fundamental key to understanding both the basic structure of ordinary matter and the birth of matter in the early universe. The ALICE collaboration involves more than 1,000 physicists, engineers and technicians from 30 countries, and will use the services and collaborating grid infrastructures of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid to provide experimental data to its members.