Subscribe here: [ Ссылка ] On 1 October, representatives of the countries that belong to or are associated with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) gathered in Geneva to celebrate its 70th anniversary. On behalf of Switzerland as a founding member and host country, President Viola Amherd paid tribute to CERN's achievements.
CERN as an institution symbolises humanity's thirst for knowledge and is also a powerful example of the successes that can be achieved when states work together rather than against each other, said President Amherd. Heads of state and government, ministers from CERN's 24 member states and representatives of associated and observer countries attended the anniversary event.
CERN was founded in 1954 to ensure cooperation between European countries in the peaceful use of nuclear and particle physics. The organisation is committed to cutting-edge research in the field of high-energy physics. Since its inception, CERN has made ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces that act between them. In 2013, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the Higgs particle at CERN. It was while working at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Today, CERN employs 2,500 people and works with around 10,000 visiting scientists from all over the world.
In her speech, Ms Amherd paid tribute to the achievements of CERN's staff since the organisation’s foundation, and to the fruitful cooperation between Switzerland and the organisation and its participating countries. She also referred to Switzerland's Foreign Policy Strategy 2024-2027, which sets the course for supporting CERN’s development in the long term. In the autumn session, Parliament approved an amendment to the law giving the Confederation the power to authorise CERN buildings on Swiss territory on the basis of a sectoral plan.
Ms Amherd used the meeting of heads of state and government as an opportunity for bilateral talks. With President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, she discussed the ongoing negotiations between Switzerland and the European Union, and the security situation in Europe. During her meeting with Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, she discussed bilateral issues, including research cooperation between Switzerland and Slovakia, as well as the war in Ukraine.
The research center that is home to the world’s largest particle accelerator is celebrating its 70th anniversary on Tuesday, with the physicists who run it aiming to unlock secrets about dark matter and other mysteries to promote science for peace in today’s conflict-darkened world.
Over the last seven decades, CERN, the sprawling research center on the Swiss-French border at Geneva, has become a household name in Europe, the West and beyond, but its complex inner workings remain a puzzle to many people.
Here’s a look at CERN and how its discoveries have changed the world and our view of the universe — and could change them more in coming years.
What is CERN?
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has retained the French-language acronym CERN for its predecessor outfit, had its origins in a 1951 meeting of the U.N.’s scientific organization that sought to build a state-of-the-art physics research facility in Europe and ease a brain drain toward America after World War II. Groundbreaking was on May 17, 1954.
Today, for cognoscenti, CERN is probably best known as home to the Large Hadron Collider, trumpeted as the world’s biggest machine, which powers a network of magnets to accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground loop in and around Geneva and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.
By capturing and interpreting the results of the collisions — as many as a billion per second — of such beams of particles, thousands of scientists both on hand at the center and remotely around the world pore over the reams of resulting data and strive to explain how fundamental physics works.
CERN says collisions inside the LHC generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the core of the sun, on a small scale and in its controlled environment.
At the collider, “every day we are able to reproduce the conditions of the primordial universe as they were a millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Yet, many open, crucial questions remain,” CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti told an anniversary celebration attended by many leaders of its 24 member countries.
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#eudebates the unique initiative aiming to promote debate, dialogue, knowledge, participation and communication among citizens. #CERN #COSMOS #universe #Space #WORLD
