EUROPEAN  ORGANIZATION  FOR  NUCLEAR  RESEARCH

[CERN]

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 20 Member States. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

Research at CERN

A gateway to the Universe

CERN is an international laboratory for particle physicists, providing some of the most technologically advanced facilities for their research into the basic building blocks of the Universe. Specialist facilities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for individual nations to build include advanced particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, and facilities for the production of exotic forms of matter, including antimatter.

The name CERN

CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The name is derived from the acronym for the French Conseil Europ?en pour la Recherche Nucl?aire, or European Council for Nuclear Research, a provisional body founded in 1952 with the mandate of establishing a world-class fundamental physics research organization in Europe. At that time, pure physics research concentrated on understanding the inside of the atom, hence the word ‘nuclear’.

When the Organization officially came into being in 1954, the Council was dissolved, and the new organization was given the title European Organization for Nuclear Research, although the name CERN was retained.

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 commonly referred to as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

The Large Hadron Collider

Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the higher energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm.

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