EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE – CERN. The Large Hadron Collider is back in business

One of the most important examples of European scientific collaboration is ready to show all its potential.

One of mankind’s most impressive scientific endeavours, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), returned to action in June, following a two-year break for maintenance work and a considerable upgrade. Often referred to as one of the Old Continent’s finest examples of international cooperation, the particle accelerator of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (commonly known as CERN) involves over 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries and connects some of the world’s most important research centres in 42 nations. Its Worldwide LHC Computing Grid gives leading institutes outside Europe – including in the US, Russia, Canada, South Korea and Taiwan – almost instant access to LHC data.

And the project further involves universities in almost every country in the developed world. In 2012, proton collisions that took place along the LHC’s 27-km ring of underground tunnels led to the ‘first sighting’ of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle theorised in 1964 by Nobel Prize winner Peter Higgs, of which there were numerous indications but for which direct experimental evidence was missing. 

If you want to read it all, purchase the entire issue in pdf for just three euro