Jul 9 2015
What does it take to push the boundaries on the known facts of what the universe is made up of?
Sharp minds, for sure. But a lot of technology, no small amount of planning, and a surprising number of breaks are also needed.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN (the acronym coming from the French “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire”), has been making groundbreaking discoveries in nuclear and particle physics since its establishment in 1952. The instruments at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors, including the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These machines smash beams of particles together at extremely high energies and record what occurs.
Ever since the beginning, when European scientists came together at the end of WWII and broke ground on the Franco-Swiss border, CERN has been an example of what can happen if people put their differences aside and work for a common goal. In the case of CERN, the differences are scientists of all different ages from every continent, and the goal is ultimate scientific advancement.
But cooperation is not the only skill necessary to keep breaking ground – it also takes meticulous organization.
The 26 experiments currently running at CERN have timelines that span from years to decades, including a project that Northeastern University is involved in, Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), referring to key design aspects of the particle detector.
The challenge that the LHC must face is how such large, complex experiments can span such a long periods of time when the technology required to meet their goals might not even be invented yet. To combat this, the LHC has a schedule stretching out 20 years in advance, to 2035, outlining when it will be running and when it will be on a shutdown — periods of time, lasting about 18 months, when the systems can be updated and parts of the detector that are normally inaccessible can be repaired and upgraded.
These shutdowns are an integral part of keeping the projects running smoothly. While some aspects of CERN projects, such as advanced computer software, can be updated while the system is working, Toyoko Orimoto, assistant professor of physics at Northeastern, sees the shutdown time as valuable because it also allows the scientists time to catch up on all of the knowledge they might have garnered from experiments up until that time.
Source: http://www.northeastern.edu/