France, Sweden and Morocco to collaborate on Atlas project
A consortium of laboratories from France, Sweden and Morocco are to work together on the Atlas project, one of the principle projects of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The completion of the 'international grouping of research' (GDRI) came with the signing of a scientific cooperation agreement between Morocco and France on 7 January. The agreement will see prominent scientists from the three countries working together on the fundamental nature of matter, the laws which govern it and the spatial-temporal structure of the universe. Atlas is the largest collaborative effort ever attempted in the physical sciences. The project already involves 2000 physicists from 150 universities and laboratories in 34 countries. The LHC, based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, is an accelerator bringing protons and ions into head-on collisions at higher energies than ever achieved before. The research will allow scientists to better understand the structure of matter and recreate the conditions prevailing in the early universe, just after the 'Big Bang'. An important milestone was reached in the project in December, when the first special superconducting quadrupole for the LHC Insertions was completed. This will form of the first sector of the LHC to be installed in 2004.