Word: cern
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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It’s rare for physics to make the news, but somehow the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator run by the CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border, became a bona-fide celebrity. There hasn’t been a tube this famous since the London subway. The collider’s renown is likely because most of the news about it has been bizarre: The Wall Street Journal ran an article about physicists there studying with a comedy coach to help them think creatively. A rap about the collider reached three million views on YouTube. Rumors...
...With all the American scientists working at the LHC, it’s true that we can benefit somewhat from the discoveries made at CERN without having to foot the bill. But we risk losing our leadership role in science and technology if we continue to let similar landmark projects be completed elsewhere. As President Clinton wrote in 1993 in a vain attempt to stop the cancellation of SSC, “the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science - a position unquestioned for generations.” In the time since then, we have also...
...Since then, Harvard’s team of professors, along with a handful of graduate students and post-docs, have made the 10- to 12-hour trip between Cambridge and the collider’s home at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), situated near the French-Swiss border...
...spend a lot of time in a hardhat down inside of the thing, connecting cables, making sure things are done correctly, that kind of stuff,” said da Costa, currently on site at CERN...
...CERN's clerisy of PhDs and Nobel Prize-winners tire pretty quickly of the public's near-erotic obsession with the destructive power of a machine they consider a harmless tool. But, there's no underestimating the thrill of the risk. Earlier this year, when I visited CERN, my tour group included a father and his slouching, intensely apathetic teenage son. It wasn't until the tour guide mentioned that a helium leak could fell a man on the spot that the youngster's eyes lit up, practically dancing with visions of white-coated scientists crumpling to the floor like...