Particle accelerators and society

Talk given by Lyn Evans, project leader of the LHC and now of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, at the CERN Opendays 2013. To view this talk alongside the slides shown see http://cds.cern.ch/record/1605122.

 

CERN in 3 minutes

CERN in a nutshell.


 

CERN NEWS: A Long Shutdown for the LHC

On 14 February at 7.24 am, the shift crew in the CERN Control Centre extracted the beams from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), bringing the machine's first three-year running period to a successful conclusion. 8 TeV collision energy was enough to find a new particle, but that's not the maximum energy the LHC was designed for. For the LHC to reach its nominal energy of 14 TeV, extra work is now needed.

 

ALPHA-2 arrives at CERN

While many experiments are methodically planning for intense works over the long shutdown, there is one experiment that is already working at full steam: ALPHA-2. Its final components arrived last month and will completely replace the previous ALPHA set-up.

Unlike its predecessor, this next generation experiment has been specifically designed to measure the properties of antimatter.

Read more about ALPHA-2: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/47/News%20Articles/1493544?ln=en

 

Hangout With CERN - The Large Hadron Collider

In this second Hangout with CERN "The Large Hadron Collider" ATLAS physicist Steven Goldfarb is joined by Giulia Papotti and Laurette Ponce from the CERN Control Centre, Despina Hatzifotiadou and Ken Read from the ALICE experiment, Achintya Rao and Roberto Rossin from the CMS experiment and Patrick Koppenburg from the LHCb experiment, as well as Jaana Nystrom from Finland and Liz Krane from the USA.

 This hangout answers questions about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) received via #askCERN on Twitter and Google+ and via YouTube and Facebook comments.

 Recorded live on 8th November 2012.

 

Happy 58th Birthday CERN

CERN is 58 years old on Saturday 29 September 2012. This video showcases some original footage from the 1950s to say happy birthday CERN!

 

CERN News The Higgs or not the Higgs? Spin will tell... PART 1

Following the announcement of the discovery of a new particle made at CERN on July 4, this piece of videonews from CERN explains what is missing to declare that the new boson found at the LHC is actually the Higgs or not and that to finally answer that question precise measurements of the spin of the newly found particle have to be made. Contains interviews to CMS Higgs Searches co-convener, Christopher Pauss and theoretician John Ellis.

"The Future of the Highest Energy Accelerators" by Frank Zimmerman (CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider is famous for its size (17 miles in circumference), its cost (more than 7 billion euros), and accomplishments (the discovery of the Higgs boson chief among them). SLAC's two-mile-long linear accelerator could be considered the LHC of its day -- 50 years ago.

In this video, recorded during the Aug. 24, 2012, symposium commemorating those 50 years, Frank Zimmerman of CERN gives a crash course on the history of particle colliders, from the first cyclotron, built by Ernest Lawrence and his graduate student Stanley Livingston in 1931 (that could fit in the palm of a hand), to CERN's nation-spanning behemoth. He also lets the audience in on his own secret master plan for ever more powerful accelerators -- not just at CERN, but at SLAC.

Gargamelle and Neutral Currents - Sixty Symbols

Gathering dust (and beer cans) under a tree at CERN - it's Gargamelle. This experiment played a key role in Nobel Prize-winning research into the weak force. It's now on public display

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Observation of a New Particle with a Mass of 125 GeV

CMS Spokesperson Joe Incandela talks about the observation of a new particle by CMS.

 At a seminar held at CERN on July 4, as a curtain raiser to the year's major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, CMS presented the collaboration's latest preliminary results in the search for the long-sought Higgs particle. The experiment observes a new particle in the mass region around 125 GeV.

 

Higgs Boson Experimental Discovery at CERN

Director General of CERN, Rolf Heuer, and the head scientists from the ATLAS and CMS at CERN in Geneva gives a conference on the discovery of the Higgs Boson at a rest mass energy of 126.5 GeV at a 4.9 confidence level (the maximum limit being 5) . This confidence level, in experimental physics, constitutes a discovery with 98% probability of certainty, making it the first true discovery of the Higgs Boson in human history.

 This is the whole press conference.

 

Interview to prof. Peter Higgs about the latest results on the searches for the Higgs boson

Peter Higgs answers questions about his feelings following the announcement of the discovery of a new particle by ATLAS and CMS that looks like the Higgs boson, at a seminar at CERN on July 4, 2012. He also explains his role in the proposal of a Higgs mechanism. (The video ends abruptly!)

 

Joe Incandela talks about the Higgs Boson

Joe Incandela, CMS Spokesperson, on CMS progress on the search for the Higgs Boson.

 

The Higgs for me

"They got sentimental when thinking of Higgs" - Physicists give their thoughts on the Higgs Boson: including Nobel Prize winners Gerhard 't Hooft, David Gross, George Charpak, Jerome Friedman, Murray Gell-Mann plus Vivek Sharma, Guido Tonelli and Gigi Rolandi (CMS), Eilam Gross and Joao Guimaraes da Costa (ATLAS) and theoretical physicists Guido Altarelli and John Ellis.

 

Rolf Heuer on the results of the Higgs searches at ATLAS and CMS July 4 2012.

Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General, answers questons on the results of the Higgs searches at ATLAS and CMS, July 4 2012, his personal feelings of the importance of the results and its implications on CERN and particle physics.

 

What is the Higgs boson? John Ellis, theoretical physicist

John Ellis answer the question What is the Higgs boson? in preparation for the press conference following the seminar on LHC 2012 results on the Higgs boson searches, due on July 4 2012 at CERN.

 

CERN NEWS : Are we there yet on the search for the Higgs boson ?

Rumors about imminent results on the Higgs boson from the LHC experiments are appearing in blogs, social media and newspapers all over the world. Meanwhile, thousands of physicists are carefully analyzing the data, looking not only for the Higgs but for many other new phenomena.

 

What is CERN? - Sixty Symbols

Professor Ed Copeland gives his own explanation and brief history of CERN - a Mecca for physicists and home of the Large Hadron Collider.

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CERN News - Neutralino back from Space

ESA astronaut and former CERN physicist Christer Fuglesang returns a symbolic neutralino particle to CERN after flying it to the International Space Station on the occasion of his STS128 mission in 2009.

 

Petabytes of data at Large Hadron Collider - Sixty Symbols

This question is posed on behalf of many Sixty Symbols viewers who asked about it. With thanks to David Barney and Steven Goldfarb, from CMS and ATLAS respectively.

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