2024-09-27 22:03:01
CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, will officially celebrate its 70th anniversary on October 1, 2024. 70 years of exploring the infinitesimal, to push the limits of knowledge thanks to the collaboration of physicists from around the world experimenting on gigantic particles colliders. . A true science, technology, atomic and human adventure which is far from over.
An infinite journey into the invisible to uncover the mysteries of the origin of the universe and all the materials that compose it… Starting with the undiscoverable dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of our universe. So far, it is CERN, in Geneva, in the LHC, the Very Large Particle Collider, physicists have achieved the feat of adding bosons and The famous Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. It is the smallest and most primitive particle in the universe.
Visit the ATLAS experiment, at CERN, in the city of Meyrin near Geneva, November 16, 2023. © Bertrand Guay / AFP
But now we need to go even further in this exploration of the most important elements of speech. However, this is not the least of the paradoxes: to discover the infinite small, we must design more gigantic machines, like FCCfuture orbit collider: 91 km in orbit straddling France and Switzerland, in a tunnel 200 meters underground. The FCC is currently studying, as announced, this year of CERN’s 70th anniversary, its Director General Fabiola Gianotti.
The FCC will be the most powerful instrument ever built to study the laws of nature in their most basic aspect and will be operational in 2045. We can be sure that it is far ahead in CERN, but how is the technological gigantism will this save us? This is the big question that occurs today for CERN, not only the financial cost, but also above all the environmental impact and the energy consumption of such a facility, which does not fail to ask the researchers themselves. How would it be possible, and above all sustainable, to push the limits of knowledge?
One of the arguments in favor of building this future giant revolution collider is also geopolitical. Because China is in the process of building one, and the director of CERN did not fail to point out, rightly, that if China wants to become president in this field of science and basic knowledge with all the associated technologies, this is possible to limit what is in the very DNA of CERN and, perhaps, its most amazing achievement: provision for all researches people and related technologies.
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A project of peaceful cooperation in basic research
This sharing of research and knowledge, free and open science, is at the heart of the CERN initiative. In 1954, exactly 70 years ago, a few years after the Second World War, CERN was created with the mission of supporting the best scientific research in order to promote peaceful cooperation in basic research. And this is exactly what is achieved at CERN, where scientists from all over the world collaborate. More than 17,000 people in total worldwide, 23 Member States and 11 Partner Countries.
It is perhaps the only laboratory in the world where Iranian researchers work with their Israeli and Palestinian colleagues, but for how long? Because of the spirit of CERN where, let’s remember, the InternetThe World Wide Web, born from the fertile minds of these scientists looking for a way to communicate and work together in the four corners of the world, this human spirit has been captured today by war on European soil, war in Ukraine. The newspaper remembers that CERN, the European space agency, has broken its agreement with Russia, and when it expires on November 30, hundreds of Russian scientists will be expelled. Creation, unless they join companies located outside the borders of Russia. Far from peace, freedom and design without borders, this is also why CERN wants to put small particles into large ones throughout this year 2024 to celebrate its 70th anniversary: the official celebration in Geneva on Tuesday 1st October and , this weekend of September. 28, here The city of science in Paris. On the program: the hunt for antimatter, bosons and neutrinos.
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