Final piece in ATLAS puzzle in place

GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb. 29 (UPI) -- The final piece of the ATLAS particle detector has been put in place in Switzerland, where the Large Hadron Collider is being assembled.

The LHC facility, which is scheduled to be switched on this summer, is poised to become the world's most powerful particle accelerator, Brandeis University said Friday in a release. Scientists said experiments conducted at the facility may help unravel some of the deepest mysteries of particle physics.

ATLAS is a worldwide collaboration comprising more than 2,100 scientists and engineers from 167 institutions in 37 countries and regions. Brandeis said the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory built and delivered several key elements of the ATLAS detector.

The last piece of ATLAS lowered into the ATLAS experimental cavern at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of two elements known as the small wheels. The two ATLAS small wheels are each about 30 feet in diameter and weigh 100 tons. The wheels are covered with sensitive detectors that will be used to identify and measure the momentum of subatomic particles called muons that are created in collisions at the LHC, the university said.