Strangeness Production and Prospects for LHC

Strangeness production represents one of the major probes for studying strong interacting matter in high energy density conditions and characterizing the Quark Gluon Plasma. In the light of some important results extracted from the past and present heavy ion experiments, at SPS and RHIC, we show that strange particles will also play an essential role at LHC and present new opportunities offered, both in the soft and the hard physics domains. Simulations of strangeness reconstruction within the ALICE experiment are presented, mainly focused on A measurements. Finally, we discuss the sensitivity of ALICE for the discovery of new forms of strange matter, namely metastable short-lived (weak decaying) strange dibaryons.