CERN-50

European Organization for Nuclear Research

50 years of research in physics

CERNEuropean Organization for Nuclear ResearchFounded in 1954 by 12 countriesToday: 20 member statesMore than 7000 users from all over the world~1000 MCHF / Year budget1954: Convention establishing the Organization - original signatures 2004: The 20 member states

CERN siteCERN main siteSPS acceleratorCERN 2nd site

CERN's mission: to build particle acceleratorsAccelerator chain at CERN, a complex business

CERN's mission: to build particle acceleratorsThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the most powerful instrument ever built to investigate particles properties. Four gigantic underground caverns to host the huge detectors

The highest energy of any accelerator in the world

The most intense beams of colliding particles

It will operate at a temperature colder than outer space

The LHC: what it will look likeThe LHC will start operation in 2007. It will certainly change our view of the Universe

Preparing the LHC27 km circumference100 m underground

Building the CMS experiment for the LHC

Why accelerators? To investigate Particle PhysicsParticle physics looks at matter in its smallest dimensionsAcceleratorsMicroscopesOptical and radio telescopesBinoculars

Methods of Particle Physics3) Identify created particles in Detector (search for new clues)1) Concentrate energy on particles (accelerator)2) Collide particles (recreate conditions after Big Bang)

Quarks (Gell-Mann) 1964 The constituents of matterProton

We don't know everything! Why three generations?Supersymmetry?Higgs boson?The LHC will help solving all these unsolved mysteries

Higgs signature at the LHCWe expect only 1 Higgs in 1,000,000,000,000 events The two proton beams at the LHC will collide head-on 800 million times per second

CERN, Internet and the WWW

Evolution of CERN computing needs CPU capacity 1998-2010

The GRID: a possible solution to CERN computing needsThe LHC computing GRID is a project funded by the European Union. The objective is to build the next generation computing infrastructure providing intensive computation and analysis

Medical applications of particle physics