On the Cover

The ATLAS Barrel Toroid Magnet

In the spring of 2008, scientists and engineers will complete construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometer underground ring located at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC will be the premier facility for research in elementary particle physics and the world's most powerful high energy physics accelerator. The LHC is a large, complex, and expensive instrumentation project supported by an international consortium that includes NSF. Research at the LHC is expected to lead to a new understanding of science at the smallest scales ever investigated. Shown on the cover is the ATLAS Barrel Toroid Magnet, so enormous that a human is dwarfed at its center.

Image courtesy of CERN.

Return to the FY 2009 budget request page.

For more information about file formats used on the NSF site, please see http:/www.nsf.gov/help/plugins.jsp.