CERN Accelerating science

The July 4th 2012 announcement was widely covered by press. For a small selection of some of the main stories see:

I have been a physicist working for CMS for about ten years now, and a guitarist for about twice as long. From time to time I have tried to somehow marry these two worlds, and when I became interested in guitar building I realised that I need to build a “CMS guitar”.

Every year CERN opens its doors to hundreds of high-school students who wish to get an in-depth look at what it is like to be a scientist or engineer at one of the world’s most prestigious research laboratories.

The Quark Matter 2012 conference, held in Washington DC from 13-18 August 2012, brings together experimental and theoretical experts in the area of heavy-ion physics.

CMS has just passed another major milestone, recording more than 10 inverse femtobarns of data at 8 TeV.

Despite higher pile-up creating more complicated events, CMS improved its running efficiency and now regularly achieves efficiencies in excess of 95, 97 or even 98% each day.

31 July 2012, CERN

Version française ci-dessous / French version below

The Prime Minister of France Jean-Marc Ayrault visited CERN on the 30th of July, accompanied by the Minister of Higher Education and Research Mme Geneviève Fioraso.

Jets are the experimental signatures of quarks and gluons produced in high-energy processes such as head-on proton-proton collisions.

Our understanding of physical reality — of everything and nothing — has changed forever. We don't yet know where we are heading, but nothing will ever be the same. As a scientist, I don't know what more I could ask for.

Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe.