ALICE event display of a Pb-Pb collision at 2.76A TeV

One of the first lead-lead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, recorded by the ALICE detector in November 2010. In this collision of lead nuclei at a small impact parameter (central collision), 1209 positively-charged (darker tracks) and 1197 negatively-charged (lighter tracks) particles are produced, about 80 percent are pions. The curvature of a track in the magnetic field of ALICE (0.5 T) is inversely proportional to the momentum of the particle. The cylinder is the Time Projection Chamber of ALICE, with a diameter of 5 m and a length of 5 m, recording the charged particles in three dimensions with the equivalent of 500 million pixels.