Mini_Big Bang collision at the Large Hadron Collider LHC. This shower of particles was the result of the first successful lead nucleus collisions in the ALICE detector at the LHC, operated by CERN, in November 2010. Two beams of lead nuclei were accelerated to almost the speed of light in the 27_kilometre_circumference accelerator, each travelling in the opposite direction, before they were brought together in the ALICE detector. The collision of the nuclei generated temperatures of 10 trillion degrees, and formed a quark_gluon plasma. These conditions are thought to have existed about a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Study of the plasma will reveal much information about the strong force, which binds the components of atomic nuclei together.