European Particle Physics Laboratory Research Articles

Green light for neutrino beam to pass below the Alps

[GENEVA] A major project to send a beam of muon neutrinos across the Alps to the Gran Sasso laboratories near Rome has been given the green light by the council of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva.

Theory Leads to Particles and Prize

The 1999 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded last week to Gerardus 9t Hooft and Martinus Veltman, two Dutch physicists who refined the electroweak theory, a key part of particle physicists9 theoretical map, so that it can be used to calculate particle masses and behaviors. Their techniques allowed precise predictions of the masses of force-carrying particles called W and Z particles, which were ultimately created and detected in 1983 at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva.

Hands on CERN: an education project on the Internet using real high energy particle collisions

An educational project primarily aimed at teachers and 15 to 18 year-old students describing the essential features of a modern high energy physics experiment has been created. The whole education package is available on the Internet. It gives a detailed description of the physics processes involved and the Standard Model of Microcosm. Real particle collisions produced with the facilities at the European particle physics laboratory (CERN) are displayed using the platform-independent programming language Java, enabling interaction with the user. The project has been used by several groups of teachers and students, and has increased their knowledge of, and interest in, particle physics. This project complements the traditional physics education and introduces students to contemporary fundamental physics.

CERN collider homes in on Higgs boson

munich Scientists at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics are celebrating a technological breakthrough that could allow them to begin to characterize the elusive Higgs boson before the end of this year.

CERN plan to train science entrepreneurs

geneva CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, is stepping up its technology-transfer activities in response to pressure from its 19 member states.

International collaboration in science and technology: lessons from CERN

here is a long and beneficial tradition of international collaboration in science and technology. There are, however, trends working against collaboration, and tensions between (for example) collaboration and competition, and European integration and increasing emphasis on national competitiveness. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding of when and in what form international collaboration is desirable. This paper considers these issues, drawing lessons from CERN – the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. CERN, which pioneered European collaboration, is now becoming in a sense a world organization. Physicists from 47 countries will participate in experiments at CERN's next project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is set to be the first megascience project constructed by a global partnership, driven ‘bottom up’ by the scientists involved. CERN's experience with the LHC could provide an excellent precedent for other projects.

Sweden must close centres or leave CERN, says council

munich Budget cuts are threatening Sweden's membership of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

Computing trends and strategy at CERN

This paper summaries current trends and strategies at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in a number of areas of computing services: desktop, local networking, physics computing farms, data management.

CERN told to start technical thinking for next collider

munich The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) has begun thinking about the successor to its Large Hadron Collider, a $1.7 billion particle accelerator that will not be built for another eight years.

CERN Picks Maiani to Build the LHC

Last month, the governing Council of CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, tapped one of its own, Council President Luciano Maiani, to be the lab9s next director-general. Maiani will take up the post in January 1999 when current incumbent Christopher Llewellyn Smith completes his 5-year term.

CERN celebrates end to a period of uncertainty

munich The council of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics has elected Luciano Maiani, currently head Italy's Institute of Nuclear Physics, as its new director-general from 1999.

The electronic journal service at CERN, a first evaluation: user access interfaces and user awareness

The article describes work done at the library of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, to improve access to electronic journals for the scientists, engineers and technicians who are their users. The library catalogues electronic journals, separating the record for the electronic version from that for any printed version. Users can then access electronic journals through the Web OPAC, or through two browsable lists of titles. GO DIRECT allows users to go straight to an article, a script calculating what the article's URL should be from the reference entered by the user. The library is keen to promote the use of electronic journals, and is undertaking user studies based on logs and an online questionnaire.

Use of the World Wide Web in astronomy teaching

I discuss the burgeoning World Wide Web and how it can be used to aid astronomy teaching.I supply a list of a variety of useful Web sites.The World Wide Web was invented 5 years ago at CERN, which is now translated as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a way of aiding access to information from remote sites. The invention of graphic interfaces, notably Mosaic by a group at the National Supercomputer Center in Illinois and then Netscape Navigator as a private development by many of the original Mosaic people, led to an explosion in use of the Web. Millions of people around the world are now able to access information from over 100,000 Web sites.There is much astronomical information on the Web, though that information make up only a small fraction of all the information available through this medium.

New Exotic Particle Points to Double Life for Gluons

PHYSICSThe gluon has long been known as an insubstantial that flits between quarks, conveying the strong force that binds them together into protons, neutrons, and other composite particles. Now there's evidence that gluons can act as constituents of matter as well, contributing mass just as quarks and electrons do. Two experiments, one at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the other at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, have just weighed in with glimpses of a short-lived hybrid particle consisting of a quark, an antimatter quark, and a gluon.

Brave New World or Blind Alley? American History on the World Wide Web

In August 1995 Netscape Communications Corporation went public at $28 a share; that fall, it briefly reached a peak of $174an incredible figure for a company making no real profits and whose best-known product was essentially free. Even at year's end, when the share price settled around $130, its market capitalization was more than $5 billion -greater than the combined market value of the New York Times Corporation and United Airlines. Netscape's skyrocketing stock price reflected the sudden discovery by investors and the general public of the Internet, the global network of connected computers that communicate with each other by following a common set of protocols. In November 1969 the Internet's predecessor, the Arpanet (named after its funder, the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency), consisted of just two specially designed communications computers located in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, California. Its initial users were scientists and technical people, particularly those with Defense Department connections. But in the 1980s and 1990s the Internet rapidly became a broadly accessed medium that began to rival the telephone and post office in importance.1 Even more responsible for the investor gold rush into Netscape stock was the still more recent emergence of the World Wide Web, whose origins go back to the efforts in the late 1980s of Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, to find a way for physicists to share information easily. The Web, as it is commonly called, uses the Internet's global network, but with a more specialized set of protocols. These protocols make it possible for computers connected to the Web to display pictures, sound, and film; for users to move very rapidly from one Web site to another; and for each Web page to have a single, distinct address (called a Universal Resource Locator or uRL). The

Using Archon - 3. Particle acceleration control

For pt.2 see ibid., p.71-9 (1996). The Archon distributed AI software framework integrated two preexisting standalone systems into a consistent, flexible application. The integrated systems provide useful information to each other and improve each other's performance through cooperation. The authors describe the use of the Archon framework to build a distributed AI application for controlling, and diagnosing faults in the Proton Synchrotron, one of CERN's (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) particle accelerators. The PS complex is the heart of CERN's accelerators and experimental facilities and also acts as an injector for the larger accelerators.

Using Archon to develop real-world DAI applications. 1

Archon provides a software framework that assists interaction between the subcomponents of a distributed AI application, and a design methodology that helps structure these interactions. The Archon project has been applied to several real world industrial applications. Two of these applications, electricity transportation management and particle accelerator control, have run online in the organizations for which they were developed-Iberdrola, a Spanish electric utility, and the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). Archon's problem solving entities are called agents; they can control their own problem solving and interact with other community members. The interactions typically involve agents cooperating and communicating with one another to enhance their individual problem solving and to better solve the overall application problem. Each agent consists of an Archon layer and an application program (known as an intelligent system).

Year of Strange Events Leaves Standard Theory Unscathed

As 1996 began, particle physics had been energized by a handful of results that standard theories of particles and forces couldn't readily explain, including a bizarre blip in a detector at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and inexplicable decay rates for the fundamental particles called Z bosons at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva. But with new data and analysis, both anomalies have faded. That comes as a disappointment to theorists who had hoped that the mysterious events were the first glimpse of a more encompassing theory of particles and forces known as supersymmetry.

Using basic research as a catalyst to exploit new technology-based innovations — a case study

The difficulties related to the commercialization, or even to the introduction, of new technologies and solutions to common problems are well documented. The paper presents a case on how to introduce new technology to a complex research environment, in order to catalyse its commercialization. The central theme of the approach is on understanding all the possible applications and implications that the new technology shares when implemented to replace conventional solutions. The potential customer of the new technology and the related technological domains must be mapped systematically to establish technological trajectories which overlap with the possible applications. This mapping provides the framework for detailed application analysis with pointers to the right people responsible for the potential application area. The results produced indicate that three characteristic application classes for a new technology can be mapped. Special solutions pinpoint a non-standard application area where the new design is being implemented as a prototype. Research and development based applications require collaboration with the customer as the new technology may assist in achieving the goals set for the future. System applications emphasize the use of the new technology as part of a complete and widely used conventional system. A thorough case study is documented to demonstrate the classification of alternative application areas of a new technology. Also, the evolution of a new technology through different application classes is discussed. The case technology is related to high-speed electrical machines and the potential user is CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

Has CERN Made the Stuff of the Newborn Universe?

Not since the universe was 10 microseconds old have the primary constituents of ordinary matter, quarks and gluons, existed outside the more complex particles, such as protons and neutrons, in which they are irrevocably bundled today. But physicists at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, recently reported evidence suggesting that they might indeed have created this long-lost state of matter in high-energy collisions of lead nuclei. The possibility has set the physics community abuzz over the past few months, although the hints of quark-gluon plasma are far from definitive.