Data Acquisition at CERN: A Future Challenge

How did the universe look in the first moments after the Big Bang? Why does matter dominate over antimatter? What are the fundamental particles that make up the world as we see it today? To find answers to those and similar questions, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is operating the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC accelerates protons to a velocity close to the speed of light and makes hundreds of them collide. The circumstances shortly after those collisions are representative to the universe's conditions only moments after the Big Bang. By analyzing thousands of such collisions, a steps can be made toward answering the previous questions.