What Are the Tiniest Blocks of Our Universe?

Introduction to CERN

By Fatemeh Khosravipour 

We are All Wondering What the Universe is Made of? How did it All Start? 

Physicists and Scientists are Working Hard in "Accelerators" Seeking Answer to This Question. Keep Through This 1^st Article of #USERN_Quick_Reads to Share the Joy of Getting to Know World's Most Powerful Particle Accelerator, Underground! The CERN!

CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory in which physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. They use the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. The particles are made to collide together at a speed close to the speed of light. The process gives the physicists clues about how the particles interact and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature.

The instruments used at CERN are purpose-built particle accelerators and detectors, the worlds hugest lab instruments ever made! Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before the beams are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN laboratory sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe's first joint ventures and now has 22 member states still collaborating in it.

The name CERN is derived from the acronym for the French “Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire”, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. At that time, pure physics research concentrated on understanding the inside of the atom, hence the word "nuclear".

Today, our understanding of matter goes much deeper than the nucleus, and CERN's main area of research is particle physics – the study of the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces acting between them. Because of this, the laboratory operated by CERN is often referred to as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

At the sixth session of the CERN Council, which took place in Paris from 29 June to 1 July 1953, the convention establishing the organization was signed, subject to ratification, by 12 states. The convention was gradually ratified by the 12 founding Member States:Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.

CERN's expertise builds broadly on three technical fields: accelerators, detectors and computing. Behind these three pillars of technology, lies a great number of areas of expertise: from cryogenics to ultra-high vacuums, from particle tracking and radiation monitoring to superconductivity and many more. These technologies, and the human expertise associated with them, translate into positive impact on society in many different fields.

As a simple example, the World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and Robert Cailliau in 1990. Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honored by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.

Below is a list of CERN's current and future accelerators and a number of CERN’s achievements, sparkles in the timeline of particle physics reviewed in years…

Accelerators:

Linear accelerator 2

Linac 2 is the starting point for the protons used in physics experiments at CERN

Linear accelerator 3

Linac 3 is the starting point for the ions used in physics experiments at CERN

Linear accelerator 4

Linac 4 boosts negative hydrogen ions to high energies. It will become the source of proton beams for the Large Hadron Collider in 2020

The Antiproton Decelerator

Not all accelerators increase a particle's speed. The AD slows down antiprotons so they can be used to study antimatter

The Large Hadron Collider

The 27-kilometre LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator. It collides protons or lead ions at energies approaching the speed of light

The Low Energy Ion Ring

LEIR takes long pulses of lead ions from Linac 3 and transforms them into the short, dense bunches suitable for injection to the Large Hadron Collider

The Proton Synchrotron

A workhorse of CERN's accelerator complex, the Proton Synchrotron has juggled many types of particle since it was first switched on in 1959

The Proton Synchrotron Booster

Four superimposed synchrotron rings receive protons from the linear accelerator, boost them to 800 MeV and inject them into the Proton Synchrotron

The Super Proton Synchrotron

The second-largest machine in CERN’s accelerator complex provides a stepping stone between the Proton Synchrotron and the LHC

Scientific Achievements

1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber

1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments

1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) operating on the Z boson peak

1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment

1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment

2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen

2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes

2012: A boson with mass around 125 GeV/c² consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson

If this article fascinated you and you feel the urge to know more, see the Video link for CERN’s a history: 

https://videos.cern.ch/record/1495143

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Source: https://home.cern/about