Hola! I'm Alexa Guido, a young and curious woman passionate about science. Join me on an exciting journey to explore the wonders of the universe through the lens of physics.
At 10.28 am on 10 September 2008, the inaugural beam of protons was successfully steered around the 27-kilometre Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, best known as CERN.
Since that day, this marvelous machine has been ready to embark on a new era of discovery at the high-energy frontier of Particle Physics standing as the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
What is the purpose of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)? The possibilities are infinite but, mainly the LHC tackles some of the most profound questions in modern science. Researchers aim to find the answer to what bestows mass upon matter, what dark matter and dark energy are, in other words, what the invisible 96% of the universe is made of, and how matter evolved from the first instants of the universe’s existence.
Interestingly, the building of CERN dates back 70 years ago in Geneva, Switzerland. At the end of the Second World War, Raoul Dautry, Pierre Auger, and Lew Kowarski in France, Edoardo Amaldi in Italy, and Niels Bohr in Denmark dreamed about creating a European atomic physics laboratory that would foster international scientific collaboration.
This dream took a significant step forward at an intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951, where the first resolution concerning the establishment of a European Council for Nuclear Research was adopted. Two months later, 11 countries signed an agreement establishing the provisional council, giving rise to the acronym CERN. But, it was not until 29 September 1954 that the European Organization for Nuclear Research was officially founded.
And, how does it work? Inside the Large Hadron Collider, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. This event can be imagined as slow-motion footage of two water-filled balloons bursting upon collision.
The beams travel in opposite directions in separate tubes at ultrahigh vacuum. They are continuously guided around the accelerator ring by an incredibly strong magnetic field generated by superconducting electromagnets operating at an astonishing ‑271.3°C, a temperature colder than outer space. Achieving the perfect collision is as difficult as firing two needles 10 kilometers apart.
When the collision occurs, seven experiments at the Large Hadron Collider use detectors to analyze the myriad of particles produced by the collisions in the accelerator: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb, TOTEM, LHCf, and MoEDAL.
All the remanet data of these collisions are highly analyzed, and each experiment has its own unique focus in detecting different particles and studying their specific interactions. For instance, the CMS, or Compact Muon Solenoid, is dedicated to exploring the Standard Model (including the Higgs boson), searching for potential extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter. Incredible, right?
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Israel is an Associate Member in the pre-stage of Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission, and UNESCO have Observer status.
Is your country a member of CERN? Engaging with this extraordinary institution opens up a world of scientific inquiry and collaboration at the cutting edge of particle physics.
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