Science at its best

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) organised its last open day before starting with its experiments. It is the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and the most powerful particle accelerator.

This accelerator is in fact of ring of 27 kilometers. It is undeground at 100 meters and runs under the countryside just outside Geneva.

This open day was a huge success, with 73000 people queue - for hours - to get a glimpse at this fantastic scientific experiment. While waiting to get inside the tunnel, I was happy to notice that so many people are actually interested by science, by knowledge. It is also a sign that not everybody thinks that Switzerland is only chocolate, cheese, mountains and banks. And it was very encouraging to see that there were many French people there as well. This CERN is truly a regional symbol. Actually it is more an international entreprise, since there are more than 100 nationalities represented among the 5000 employees.The total cost is estimated at 10 billion Swiss francs and it took more than 7 years to complete. What stoke me at first, was that it looks so much like an industrial masterpiece, and not so much like a scientific experiment. So, inside the tunnel, there are three tubes. The particules will travel inside them almost at the speed of light, meaning that they will cover the 27 km 11000 times per second! They will eventually collide. All this will be possible thanks to a highly complex system of magnets, at super low temperatures (around -271 degrees; meaning that it will be the world's largest fridge!) and at the same pressure that exists in interplanetary space. It will be recorded thanks to sofisticated detectors and cameras and stored in the most powerful supercomputer system in the world. The tour guide, who was a CERN scientist, explained all the mechanisms, but I must admit it was too technical for me.

The objective of these experiments is to understand why particles have a mass, why the Universe is mostly composed of matter and not antimatter. The conditions created will be close to the ones that existed just after the "Big Bang".

In the end, I must admit that the extraordinary complexity of this experiments did not really show during the visit. It seemed more like a industrial complex, indeed full of technology, but it was difficult to think that fantastic and very significative scientific results could come out of this place in the next few months.