European Organization for Nuclear Research 50 years of research in physics 05 Novembre 2003

CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research Founded in 1954 by 12 countries Today: 20 member states More than 7000 users from all over the world ~1000 MCHF / Year budget 1954: Convention establishing the Organization - original signatures 2004: The 20 member states

CERN site SPS accelerator CERN main site LHC accelerator CERN 2nd site Geneva Airport

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

CERN's mission: to build particle accelerators The 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 like The LHC will start operation in 2007. It will certainly change our view of the Universe

Preparing the LHC 27 km circumference 100 m underground

Building the CMS experiment for the LHC

Particle physics looks at matter in its smallest dimensions Why accelerators? To investigate Particle Physics Particle physics looks at matter in its smallest dimensions Accelerators Microscopes Binoculars Optical and radio telescopes

Methods of Particle Physics 1) Concentrate energy on particles (accelerator) 2) Collide particles (recreate conditions after Big Bang) 3) Identify created particles in Detector (search for new clues)

Today’s periodic system of the fundamental building blocks The constituents of matter Quarks (Gell-Mann) 1964 Proton Today’s periodic system of the fundamental building blocks

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

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

CERN, Internet and the WWW

Evolution of CERN computing needs CPU capacity 1998-2010 Moore’s law Jan 2000: 3.5K SI95 LHC experiments Other experiments

The GRID: a possible solution to CERN computing needs The 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