Heavy ions with the Large Hadron Collider and the ALICE detector

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction at CERN is also planned as a heavy ion collider with lead ions colliding at an energy of 2.7+2.7 ATeV. This corresponds to collisions of matter with cosmic rays of the utmost energies observed so far promising the study of new and exciting aspects of physics. Minor improvements of the newly commissioned lead ion source at the CERN SPS are necessary in order to provide a luminosity of L=2×10²⁷ cm^?2s^?1. The detector ALICE has been chosen as the third detector for the LHC and will be dedicated to the physics of these nuclear collisions and also to the large cross section physics in p+p collisions.