The Large Hadron Collider is the world s biggest particle accelerator. It s located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.
Beamline for Schools 2022 is kicking off! Since 2014, this competition has been offering teams of high-school students from all over the world the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a scientist at a major particle physics laboratory. It is open to teams of five students or more, aged 16 and over, led by an adult supervisor, or “coach”.
Participants are invited to think of a simple and creative experiment that can be performed at the beamline of a particle accelerator. The written proposal – with an optional short video – must be submitted by 15 April 2022 CET at midnight, the deadline for applications. The task may sound very challenging or even intimidating, but participants can draw inspiration from previous years’ proposals. They can also count on the help of the Beamline for Schools team and of regional contact persons from different countries.
Following the reviewing process, two winning teams get the opportunity to conduct their experiments at a parti
Update: The first pilot beams circulated in the LHC on 19 October 2021. On 26 October, there were low-intensity test collisions at an injection energy of 450 GeV per beam and stable collisions of proton beams were declared on the morning of 27 October.
Since 2019, many places at CERN have been operating like beehives to complete the scheduled upgrades for the second long shutdown (LS2) of the accelerator complex. This period of intense work is now coming to an end with the injection of the first pilot beams into the LHC. This major milestone will be featured during a live event on CERN’s social media channels on 20 October at 4 pm (CEST).
The pilot beams are part of the commissioning of the LHC machine in preparation for its Run 3, starting in 2022. With an integrated luminosity equal to the two previous runs combined, the four LHC experiments will be able to perform even more precise measurements. Yet, to stay apace with the accelerator’s improved vigour, all of them had t
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N TOF poised for 10 more years of research with third-generation neutron spallation target Installation of the third generation n TOF spallation target in the target pit in April 2021. (Image: CERN)
Target-based experiments are plentiful at CERN, be it at the Antiproton Decelerator, the ISOLDE facility or the North Area. They provide the Laboratory with a variety of secondary particles through the interaction of the target’s components with high-energy proton beams from the accelerator complex. One example is the n TOF (Neutron Time-Of-Flight) facility, where a spallation target is used to produce a neutron beam. After ten years of service, the old n TOF neutron spallation target was removed and a third-generation target successfully installed in the facility this month. This achievement marks the culmination of four years of development led by the Sources, Targets and Interactions (STI) group in the Systems (SY) department, which is respo