What is CERN ?

the public relations team at CERN opened up the door to massive conjecture - not to mention a huge amount of 'conspiracy theory' - by opting for the particular logo design that they did.

Although most corporations shun any connection with religion and the spiritual world, CERN has chosen as its mascot a Hindu goddess.

The complex instruments developed for particle physics, at CERN and other similar facilities, have spawned numerous other uses, including PET scans, the most common tool used to diagnose cancers.

CERN is presently ramping up the largest atom collider in the world (it takes months for the magnets to get the particles to reach near light-speed) in preparation for their next atomic collision which is scheduled to take place next month – with barely a mention in the media of the risks involved.

some critics say this scientific experiment poses greater risks than even the tests prior to the introduction of the atomic bomb, it would stand to reason that there should be much more discussion on this ‘dark matter.’

CERN costs the equivalent of a cappuccino a year per European

Science on this scale doesn’t come cheap: CERN’s annual budget for 2016 is 1.1 billion euros. However, as an Italian, Gianotti is keen to contextualise this in terms of frothy coffee.

Sadly, and not a little ironically, CERN – which essentially governs itself as its own fiefdom – is operating just as invisibly as the particles they are attempting to study.

CERN has been the trailblazer on a number of other highly credible projects, which may tempt people to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding CERN, which certainly ranks as one of the most comprehensive and expensive scientific experiments in history.

As well as inspiring geeks, big science has intrigued big business

At CERN, over 12,500 scientists from over 110 nationalities collaborate, working in a culture where authority comes from intellectual contributions rather than hierarchy, and colleagues generally share a sense of purpose.

But even the world’s biggest science experiment can be stopped by weasels

Yes, weasels. In April 2016, the Large Hadron Colider lost power after a nefarious rodent chewed through electrical wiring. This followed an unfortunate incident in 2009, when a bird dropped a bit of baguette onto electrical equipment and caused a power outage.

In 1989, under the guidance of Tim Berners-Lee, CERN began the World Wide Web project, which led to the first webpage in history. On April 30, 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.

In 1989, under the guidance of Tim Berners-Lee, CERN began the World Wide Web project, which led to the first webpage in history. On April 30, 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.

In 1989, under the guidance of Tim Berners-Lee, CERN began the World Wide Web project, which led to the first webpage in history. On April 30, 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.

On the outskirts of Geneva, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) mimics the aftermath of the Big Bang by sending beams of protons hurtling into one another at close to the speed of light.

Despite jubilation in the physics community when the Higgs was detected in 2012 – and public relief that the experiment didn’t suck the whole world into a gaping wormhole – there remains a lot to discover.

“95% of the universe in still unknown,” Fabiola Gianotti, the Director General of CERN, explained in a presentation to staff at the World Economic Forum. “We are all driven by a shared passion for knowledge.”

In other words, however sophisticated we imagine our age of space exploration and self-driving cars to be, we are still staggeringly ignorant about almost everything in the universe.

CERN wants to change that. It is a grandiose undertaking that not only sheds light on the esoteric world of particle physics, but also on international collaboration, purpose and progress.

As the Romanian flag is raised for the first time this week to mark the arrival of CERN’s 22nd member state, here are some startling facts about Europe’s most ambitious scientific project.

To be precise, it’s 1.9 K (-271.3°C), almost absolute zero. A cryogenic cooling system keeps it this frigid for the sake of the superconductor electromagnets, which send proton beams hurtling towards one another in a loop 100 metres below the ground.

To be precise, it’s 1.9 K (-271.3°C), almost absolute zero. A cryogenic cooling system keeps it this frigid for the sake of the superconductor electromagnets, which send proton beams hurtling towards one another in a loop 100 metres below the ground.

. Beams of protons hurtle around the ring in opposite directions until they collide with such force that they generate myriad sub-atomic particles – including the Higgs Boson. A set of gargantuan detectors then crunch some of the data from 40 million collisions a second.

Before the discovery of the Higgs on July 4, 2012, physicists had a theory but no proof to explain how elementary particles like electrons and quarks got their mass.

a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, wanted to title his 1993 book on the subject The Goddamn Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? Sensing this to be too controversial, his publishers switched it to the “God particle” – which in itself has irked those who believe that religion and science are separate spheres.

Higgs Boson is unlikely to prove or disprove the existence of God, but it does help to cement the Standard Model: a physics theory developed in the 60s, which outlines the building blocks of matter and the forces that govern them.