Behind the Scenes at Particle Physics Labs

In August, 2010, 200 amateur photographers had the opportunity to walk into the top five particle physics laboratories in four countries and take pictures as a part of the InterAction Collaborations Particle Physics Photowalk contest. Thousands of photographs were submitted to local competitions at the participating laboratories, which included DESY, TRIUMF, CERN in Switzerland, Fermilab in Illinois, and KEK in Japan. Each laboratory selected their local winners, and forwarded the top three to compete in two global competitions organized by the laboratories in the spirit of friendly competition.

This portrait of a wire chamber won first place in the people's choice global competition, second place in the global jury competition, and first place in DESY's local competition. Photographer: Hans-Peter Hildebrandt

More than 1,300 photography enthusiasts voted online to name the people’s choice winners. Hans-Peter Hildebrandt’s photograph of a wire chamber at DESY garnered the most votes, followed closely by Tony Reynes’ image of an accelerator operator on shift at Fermilab, and Matthias Teschke’s photograph of the HERA accelerator tunnel at DESY.

A calendar featuring the 15 winning images from the Global Particle Physics Photowalk is now available for free download. The high resolution images are perfect for printing.

This image of an accelerator operator on shift in Fermilab's Main Control Room captured second place in the people's choice global vote and third place in Fermilab's local competition. The Main Control Room is a mission control center where scientists monitor the laboratory's accelerator complex 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Photographer: Tony Reynes

This classic image of HERA's accelerator tunnel captured third place in the people's choice global vote, and third place in DESY's local competition. Photographer: Matthias Teschke

This image of the 8Pi nuclear-physics experiment won first place in the global jury competition, and third place in TRIUMF's local competition. The muted black and white image of the 8Pi experiment's inner detectors captures the beauty and symmetry of physics. Photographer: Mikey Enriquez

This image of two quadrupole magnets won third place in the global jury competition and second place in DESY's local competition. Photographer: Heiko Roemisch

This photograph of TRIUMF's material-science facility won second place in TRIUMF's local competition. The seemingly industrial and technical landscape of the facility is softened here by a texturing technique digitally applied by Mikey Enriquez. Photographer: Mikey Enriquez

This photograph of the Broken Symmetry sculpture at Fermilab's main entrance won first place in the laboratory's local competition. The arch straddles the road and appears perfectly symmetric when viewed directly from below, but has carefully calculated asymmetry from its other views. Photographer: Ken Duszynski

This image placed third in CERN’s local competition. The photograph shows an electric cable connected to a valve that is designed to avoid pressure damage in a magnet. Photographer: Christian Stephani

This view of the roof inside the Meson Laboratory, one of the buildings in Fermilab's fixed target experimental area, won second place in Fermilab's local competition. Each scalloped section of the roof was intentionally built to be approximately the same size as the tunnel inside the Tevatron. Photographer: Charles Peterson

This photograph of the Belle Detector won second place in KEK's local jury and web competition. Photographer: Keisuke Mori

This photograph of a connection pipe from a spare Large Hadron Collider quadrupole magnet at CERN won second place in the laboratory's local competition. Photographer: Diego Giol

This image won first place in TRIUMF's local competition. Atop the world's largest cyclotron at TRIUMF, paperclips experience some fringe magnetic field and stand upright, dancing atop the table's surface. High-school student Ali Lambert artfully captured this iconic experience of all visitors to TRIUMF. Photographer: Ali Lambert

This collage of the KEK particle physics laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan won second place in KEK's local competition by local jury and web competition. Photographer: Akira Ominato

This image of the test beamline for the Linac4 project won first place in CERN’s local competition. Linac4, when completed, will be CERN’s newest linear accelerator and the first link in the proton acceleration chain for the Large Hadron Collider. Shown are the movable tuner and RF power coupler in Linac4’s medium-energy beam transport line; the cable in the foreground waits for the tuner’s stepper motor. Photographer: Diego Giol

This photograph of researchers working through the weekend in the Accelerator Test Facility won first place in KEK's local jury and web competition. Photographer: Yuki Hayashi

Check out the Flickr page for more pictures.

[via ZDnet]