The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French French is a Romance language spoken, around the world, by more than 100 million people as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 54 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language: Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), known as CERN (see Naming), pronounced /ˈsɜrn/ (French pronunciation: [sɛʀn]), is the world's largest particle physics Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called high energy physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as laboratory A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories. These notably include:, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva Geneva (French: Genève, German: Genf Genf , Italian: Ginevra, Romansh: Genevra) is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and is the most populous city of Romandie (the French-speaking part of Switzerland). Situated where the Rhône River exits Lake Geneva (in French known as Lac Léman), it is the capital of the Republic on the Franco France (pronounced /ˈfræns/ or /ˈfrɑːns/; French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the-Swiss Switzerland (German: die Schweiz French: la Suisse, Italian: Svizzera, Romansh: Svizra, officially the Swiss Confederation is a landlocked alpine country of roughly 7.7 million people (2009) in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km². Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states, called cantons. Bern is the seat of the federal border, established in 1954 Categories: 1954 | 1950s in science | Years in science .[1] The organization has twenty European Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast. Europe is washed upon to the north by the Arctic Ocean and member states, and is currently the workplace of approximately 2,600 full-time employees, as well as some 7,931 scientists A scientist, in the broadest sense, refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, scientist refers to individuals who use the scientific method. The person may be an and engineers An engineer is a skilled technical professional. Engineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. The term is derived from the Latin root "ingenium," meaning "cleverness". The industrial (representing 580 universities and research facilities and 80 nationalities).

CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators A particle accelerator is a device that uses electric fields to propel electrically-charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: linear accelerators and circular accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called high energy physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as research. Numerous experiments In scientific inquiry, an experiment is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences. An experiment can be used to help solve practical problems and to support or negate theoretical have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. It is also noted for being the birthplace of the World Wide Web The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN (see Naming), pronounced /ˈsɜrn/ (French pronunciation: [sɛʀn]), is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, established in 1954. The organization has twenty European member states, and is currently the. The main site at Meyrin Meyrin is a municipality of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It is the city located nearest to the CERN particle physics laboratory also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis, and because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been (and continues to be) a major wide area networking Wide Area Network is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries ). This is in contrast with personal area networks (PANs), local area networks (LANs), campus area networks (CANs), or metropolitan area networks (MANs) which are usually limited to a hub.

As an international facility, the CERN sites are officially under neither Swiss nor French jurisdiction. Member states' contributions to CERN for the year 2008 totalled CHF 1 billion (approximately € 664 million).[2]

Contents

History

The convention establishing CERN was signed on 29 September September 29 is the 272nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 93 days remaining until the end of the year 1954 Year 1954 was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar) by 11 countries in Western Europe.a[›][1] The acronym CERN originally stood, in French French is a Romance language spoken, around the world, by more than 100 million people as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 54 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language, for Conseil Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for setting up the laboratory, established by 11 European Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast. Europe is washed upon to the north by the Arctic Ocean and governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1954.[3] According to Lew Kowarski Lew Kowarski was a naturalized French physicist, of Russian-Polish descent. He was a lesser known, but important contributor to nuclear science, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed, the acronym could have become the awkward OERN, and Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory. In addition, he also made important contributions to nuclear physics, quantum field theory, and particle physics said "But the acronym can still be CERN even if the name is [not]".[citation needed]

Soon after its establishment, the work at the laboratory went beyond the study of the atomic nucleus The nucleus of an atom is the very dense region, consisting of nucleons , at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons, into higher-energy physics, an activity which is mainly concerned with the study of interactions between particles Subatomic particles are all particles which are "smaller" than atoms. Two great classes of subatomic particles exist: elementary particles, which are particles with no substructure , and composite particles, which are particles with substructure (particles that are made of other particles). Particle physics and nuclear physics are. Therefore the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules) which better describes the current research being performed at CERN.

Scientific achievements

Several important achievements in particle physics have been made during experiments at CERN. These include, but are not limited to, the following.

The 1984 Nobel Prize in physics The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Prize in literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. The first Nobel was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer Simon van der Meer is a Dutch accelerator physicist who invented the concept of stochastic cooling in colliders, making possible the discovery of the W particle and the Z particle at the CERN 500 Gev proton-antiproton collider by the UA-1 experimental collaboration led by Carlo Rubbia. As a result van der Meer and Rubbia shared the 1984 Nobel for the developments that led to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons.

The 1992 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak Georges Charpak is a Polish-French physicist and Nobel Prize in Physics winner "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber."

Computer science

See also: History of the World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, as e-mail does. The history of the Internet dates back significantly further than that of the This NeXT Computer The NeXT Computer was a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by Steve Jobs' company NeXT from 1988 until 1990. It ran the Unix-based NeXTSTEP operating system. The NeXT Computer was packaged in a 1-foot (305 mm) die-cast magnesium cube-shaped case, which led to the machine being informally referred to as "The Cube& used by British The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA , is an English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web – making the first proposal in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an at CERN became the first Web server A web server has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:.

The World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the World Wide Web was invented in 1989 by the English began as a CERN project called ENQUIRE ENQUIRE was an early software project written in the second half of 1980 by Tim Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide Web in 1989. ENQUIRE had some of the same ideas as the Web and the Semantic Web but was different in several important ways. One of them was that it was not supposed to be released to the general public. ENQUIRE was, initiated by Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA , is an English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between in 1989 and Robert Cailliau Robert Cailliau is a Belgian computer scientist who, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World Wide Web in 1990 [3]. Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honored by the ACM The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007. Its headquarters are in New York City in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.

Based on the concept of hypertext Hypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Other means of interaction may also be present, such as a bubble with text appearing when, the project was aimed at facilitating sharing information among researchers. The first website went on-line in 1991. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone. A copy of the original first webpage, created by Berners-Lee, is still published on the World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of June 2009, the W3C had 388 members website as a historical document.

This Cisco Systems router at CERN was probably one of the first IP routers deployed in Europe.

Prior to the Web's development, CERN had been a pioneer in the introduction of Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and technology, beginning in the early 1980s. A short history of this period can be found here.

More recently, CERN has become a centre for the development of Grid computing Grid computing is the application of several computers to a single problem at the same time — usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data, hosting among others the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE Enabling Grids for E-sciencE is a series of projects funded by the European Commission through the Directorate-General for Information Society and Media. It connects more than 70 institutions in 27 European countries to construct a multi-science computing Grid infrastructure for the European Research Area, allowing researchers to share computing (EGEE) and LHC Computing Grid The LHC Computing Grid, launched on October 3, 2008, is a distribution network designed by CERN to handle the massive amounts of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider . It incorporates both private fiber optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet projects. It also hosts the CERN Internet Exchange Point (CIXP), one of the two main Internet Exchange Points An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure that allows different Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange Internet traffic between their networks (autonomous systems) by means of mutual peering agreements, which allow traffic to be exchanged without cost. IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via in Switzerland. CERN's computer network is connected to JANET (formerly UKERNA), the research and education network, JANET aids CERN to disperse large data over a network grid for closer analysis.

Particle accelerators

Current complex

CERN operates a network of six accelerators and a decelerator. Each machine in the chain increases the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or to the next more powerful accelerator. Currently active machines are:

Map of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider

Main article: Large Hadron Collider Construction of the CMS detector for LHC at CERN

Most of the activities at CERN are currently directed towards building a new collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project.

The LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground, in the region between the Geneva airport and the nearby Jura mountains. It uses the 27 km circumference circular tunnel previously occupied by LEP which was closed down in November 2000. CERN's existing PS/SPS accelerator complexes will be used to pre-accelerate protons which will then be injected into the LHC.

Six experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, TOTEM, LHC-forward and ALICE) are currently being built, and will be running on the collider; each of them will study particle collisions under a different point of view, and with different technologies. Construction for these experiments required an extraordinary engineering effort. Just as an example, to lower the pieces for the CMS experiment into the underground cavern which will host it, a special crane will have to be rented from Belgium, which will be able to lift the almost 2000 tons for each piece. The first of the approximately 5,000 magnets necessary for construction was lowered down a special shaft at 13:00 GMT on 7 March 2005.

This accelerator will generate vast quantities of computer data, which CERN will stream to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (making use of a specialised grid infrastructure, the LHC Computing Grid). In April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB per second to seven different sites across the world. If all the data generated by the LHC is to be analysed, then scientists must achieve 1,800 MB per second before 2008.

The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008.[9] The first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC was at 8:28 GMT on 10 September 2008,[10] but the system went wrong, due to a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008. After repairs the magnet must be recooled, and with the previously scheduled winter shutoff (due to power consumption) no results are expected before July 2009.

Decommissioned accelerators

Sites

CERN's main site, as seen from Switzerland looking towards France.

The smaller accelerators are located on the main Meyrin site (also known as the West Area), which was originally built in Switzerland alongside the French border, but has been extended to span the border since 1965. The French side is under Swiss jurisdiction and so there is no obvious border within the site, apart from a line of marker stones. There are six entrances to the Meyrin site:

The SPS and LEP/LHC tunnels are located underground almost entirely outside the main site, and are mostly buried under French farmland and invisible from the surface. However they have surface sites at various points around them, either as the location of buildings associated with experiments or other facilities needed to operate the colliders such as cryogenic plants and access shafts. The experiments themselves are located at the same underground level as the tunnels at these sites.

Three of these experimental sites are in France, with ATLAS in Switzerland, although some of the ancillary cryogenic and access sites are in Switzerland. The largest of the experimental sites is the Prévessin site, also known as the North Area, which is the target station for non-collider experiments on the SPS accelerator. Other sites are the ones which were used for the UA1, UA2 and the LEP experiments (the latter which will be used for LHC experiments).

Outside of the LEP and LHC experiments, most are officially named and numbered after the site where they were located. For example, NA32 was an experiment looking at the production of charmed particles and located at the Prévessin (North Area) site while WA22 used the BEBC bubble chamber at the Meyrin (West Area) site to examine neutrino interactions. The UA1 and UA2 experiments were considered to be in the Underground Area, i.e. situated underground at sites on the SPS accelerator.

Financing (Budget 2008)

member state contribution Mio. CHF
Germany 19,40 % 208
United Kingdom 17,35 % 186
France 14,92 % 160
Italy 11,43 % 122
Spain 8,34 % 89
Netherlands 4,51 % 48
Switzerland 3,03 % 32
Belgium 2,74 % 29
Norway 2,70 % 29
Sweden 2,56 % 27
Poland 2,30 % 24
Austria 2,19 % 23
Greece 1,83 % 19
Denmark 1,82 % 19
Finland 1,40 % 15
Portugal 1,12 % 12
Czech Republic 0,96 % 10
Hungary 0,83 % 9
Slovakia 0,37 % 4
Bulgaria 0,20 % 2

Member states

Member states of CERN as of 2008 Founding members Members who joined CERN later Animated map showing changes in CERN membership from 1954 until 1999 (borders as of 1989 and 2008) CERN members (in blue) and observers (in red: USA, Israel, Turkey, Japan, India, and Russia) as of 2008[update]

The original twelve CERN signatories from 1954 were:

All founding members have so far (as of 2008[update]) remained in the CERN organisation, except Yugoslavia which left in 1961 and never re-joined.

Since its foundation, CERN regularly accepted new members. All new members have remained in the organisation continuously since their acceptance, except Spain which joined in 1961, withdrew eight years later, and joined anew in 1983. CERN's membership history is as follows:

There are currently twenty member countries, 18 of which are also European Union member states.

Eight additional international organizations or countries have observer status:

Non-Member States (with dates of Co-operation Agreements) currently involved in CERN programmes are:

Maps of the history of CERN membership

1954 (12 members): CERN is founded a[›] (1989 borders)

1959 (13 members): Austria joins (1989 borders)

1961 (13 members): Spain joins and Yugoslavia leaves (1989 borders)

1969 (12 members): Spain leaves (1989 borders)

1983 (13 members): Spain re-joins (1989 borders)

1985 (14 members): Portugal joins (1989 borders)

1991 (16 members): Poland and Finland join, and Germany has been reunified (2008 borders)

1992 (17 members): Hungary joins (2008 borders)

1993 (19 members): Czech Republic and Slovakia join (2008 borders)

1999 (20 members): Bulgaria joins (2008 borders)

Animated map showing changes in CERN membership from 1954 until 1999 (borders are as of 1989 and 2008)

World map showing CERN members in blue and observers in red, as of 2008

Public exhibits

The Globe of Science and Innovation at CERN

Facilities at CERN open to the public include:

In popular culture

See also

Notes

References

CERN: where the Web was born
  1. ^ a b c [1]
  2. ^ CERN Website - Resources Planning and Control
  3. ^ The CERN Name, on the CERN website. Last accessed on 25 October 2006.
  4. ^ cern
  5. ^ cern
  6. ^ cern
  7. ^ V. Fanti et al., Phys. Lett. B465 (1999) 335 (hep-ex/9909022)
  8. ^ CERN Website - LINAC
  9. ^ Overbye, Dennis (29 July 2008). "Let the Proton Smashing Begin. (The Rap Is Already Written.)". The New York Times.
  10. ^ CERN press release, 7 August 2008
  11. ^ "Red Carpet for CERN's 50th". CERN bulletin. November 2004.
  12. ^ Macedonia joins CERN (SUP)
  13. ^ Djelic to meet CERN Director General
  14. ^ [2]

External links

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1976–1984 Super Proton Synchrotron UA1 · UA2
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Acceleration Structure p and Pb · Proton Synchrotron Booster · Proton Synchrotron · Super Proton Synchrotron
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Coordinates: 46°14′03″N 6°03′10″E / 46.23417°N 6.05278°E

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