Concerning CERN

I never imagined that I would write about scientific  experiments in my blog, and much less visit the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Left to my own devices, I’m
more about nature, food, architecture and people when I travel. But what has stayed with me and awakened my long inert science nerve from this recent European trip was what I learned at CERN. Straddling the Swiss-French border, CERN is home to the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, the 18 mile long Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is buried below ground and located between the Jura mountain range in France and Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Now, colliders  may not be high on a tourists’ agenda, but in our case, our personal friendship with one of the physicists there, drew us to explore this area.

Basically, the LHC is a machine that accelerates two beams of particles in opposite directions to more than 99.9 percent the speed of light. When these beams smash together, showers of new particles emerge. These collisions are at the highest energies ever observed in lab conditions and they allow physicists to explore new territory in matter, energy, space and time; to make discoveries about the most basic bits of matter, and to resolve certain fundamental theoretical problems in physics. Other experiments have more immediate practical applications, such as how radiation can affect tissues in the body and lead to cures for cancer. Although CERN is European-led, thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world are involved.

Our physicist friend, Bernard Pope has been teaching at Michigan State University for many years. His first job was at CERN, 40 years ago and he remains affiliated with the institute. In fact, he was responsible for setting up some of the first experiments when a new accelerator came online in 1971. When they decided to build a yet larger accelerator, he led the committee to do this. Bernard  was also involved in designing the Atlas Experiment, one of the main projects they’re doing at CERN now. Thank you Bernard for leading us through the CERN museum and explaining all that was taking place and patiently answering our questions. It’s always enjoyable to be in your company but at CERN, we saw the passionate scientist in you.