"Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary, In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves."
~Vittoria Vetra~
CERN atau dalam bahasa Indonesia: Organisasi Eropa untuk Riset Nuklir (singkatan dari bahasa Perancis: Organisation Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire, bahasa Inggris: European Organization for Nuclear Research) adalah sebuah kompleks laboratorium percepatan partikel terbesar di dunia yang terletak di perbatasan antara Perancis dan Swis, persis di sebelah barat Jenewa.
History
The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2.400 full-time employees and hosts some 10.000 visiting scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.
The acronym CERN originally stood, in French, for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for setting up the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952.
The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1954.
According to Lew Kowarski, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed the acronym could have become the awkward OERN, and Heisenberg said that the acronym could " still be CERN even if the name is [not]".
Soon after its establishment the work at the laboratory went beyond the study of the atomic nucleus into higher-energy physics, which is mainly concerned with the study of interactions between particles.
Therefore the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules) which better describes the research being performed at CERN.
Scientific achievements
Several important achievements in particle physics have been made during experiments at CERN. They include:
- 1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber.
- 1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments.
- 1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) operating on the Z boson peak.
- 1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment.
- 1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment.
- 2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen
- 2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes
The 1984 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that led to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons. The 1992 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber."
CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.
The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data-processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis and, because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been a major wide area networking hub.
Teaching Resources
The Teaching Materials presented here will allow teachers to introduce topics in modern physics to middle and high school students, and to do so in interesting and novel ways.
In addition to the new Antimatter Teaching Module
(a series of lesson plans, background materials and extension topics on antimatter, aimed at students 14-15 years),
these materials include presentations, recorded lectures, teaching materials, movies, animations, games, posters, photos, games and ideas for practical activities in the classroom. All this material is available for free when used for educational purposes.
Teaching Materials
- Cosmic Ray Teaching Module
- The Amazing World of Atoms
- Antimatter Teaching Module
- CERN
- Particle Physics
- Cosmology
- Principles of Experimental Physics
- Introduction to Accelerators
- Applications
- Multimedia material
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