Status and perspectives of ALICE at the LHC

ALICE is one of the four large experiments at the LHC. It focuses on the study of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. Its main goal is to study in great detail the properties of matter under extreme energy densities. We discuss some aspects of the ALICE research program, the experiment future plans as well as some general items of the ALICE upgrade. The present detector allows to study diffractive physics and photon induced processes. A proposal to install detectors in the forward region is presented here. These detectors would allow to study processes with rapidity gaps larger than those presently covered.