On 30th October, scientists at CERN switched off the proton beams for the Large Hadron Collider. The completed 2011 run outdid all expectations, especially for luminosity, and provided the collider's four experiments with an unprecedented amount of…

Science is closing in on the most elusive thing in the Universe.

On Saturday, 12th November, a group of 240 young girls aged 11-14, sporting white lab coats, took the Science building of the University of Geneva by storm. From early in the morning until the afternoon they experienced, among other things,…

The 10- and 11-year-old children of Geneva town hall employees were allowed to skip classes on 10th November to participate in the nation-wide “Futur en Tous Genres” day and find out about different career prospects. During an informative morning,…

CMS is one of two general-purpose experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that have been built to search for new physics. CMS is designed to detect a wide range of particles and phenomena produced in the LHC's high-energy proton-proton and…

The LHC smashes groups of protons together at close to the speed of light: 40 million times per second and with seven times the energy of the most powerful accelerators built up to now. Many of these will just be glancing blows but some will be head…

At about half-past five in the evening on Sunday, 30th October, an e-mail from Run Coordination to the CMS collaboration said: At 17:00 today the LHC dumped the last proton beams for the year to start the machine development period and to prepare…

The second episode of the monthly What's new @ CERN TV programme features Steve Myers, Director of Accelerators, on the LHC performance and plans, Yves Schulz of ALICE on Heavy Ion running, and more ... Watch show on YouTube  

Physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are analysing the results of their first attempt at colliding protons and lead ions. Further attempts at proton–lead collisions are expected over the next few weeks...

The source of energy for most of the life on our planet originates from proton-proton collisions at the core of the Sun, which occur at an energy (or temperature) about a billion times less than the collision energy of the LHC. Due to emission of…

The Large Hadron Collider will spend four weeks probing the conditions of the early universe in better detail than ever before, as it takes a break from the hunt for the Higgs boson...

At 17:00 on Sunday 30th October the LHC dumped the last proton beams for the year to start the machine development period and to prepare for heavy ion running. This means that we have come to the end of proton operation for 2011. In 2011 the LHC…