CERN: powerful laboratory

2000/12/01 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika

The last event of the Plaza de la Física programme took place at CERN headquarters in Geneva. There is no better option. It has been mentioned as the most powerful laboratory in the world. The experiments developed in it aim to reproduce the physical conditions in which the universe was born. They have a large particle accelerator in Geneva. It is a tunnel of twenty-seven kilometers to put the particles at high speed and make them collide with each other.

In fact, Geneva wants to close the accelerator used to date by CERN, called LEP, and build another new one, called LHC. And while the OPE was closed, in recent years the remains of the most sought particle have been captured. Nature of this particle, from the Higgs boson, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J. G. Veltman was announced by Dutch physicists as a result of theoretical calculations. For these works they were awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics. Due to these experiments of recent days much has been discussed about the need or not to close the LEP accelerator. Finally, CERN has decided to close and physicists trying to catch the Higgs particle have also had to wait for the new LHC.