Good News for Fundamental Research

Editorial image courtesy and by permission of Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers

L'Organisation Européenne Pour la Recherche Nucléaire (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research) or CERN is an intergovernmental research organisation that operates a particle accelerator in Geneva. This is the Large Hadron Collider or LHC, an underground, 27km diameter, circular ring in which protons are accelerated and collided into one another at almost the speed of light. This initial step of Ireland being accepted to become an associate member of CERN will give Irish scientists the opportunity to become eligible for staff positions at the organisation.

What's a Particle Accelerator? 

If you've ever seen the inside of an old CRT TV or computer monitor, you would have noticed the long glass tube attached to the back of the screen. That was the electron gun that shot beams of electrons, known as cathode rays, at the back of the phosphor coated screen. The collision of the cathode rays caused the phosphor coating to emit light and by scanning the beam, a composite image could be formed. (Although only a single dot was visible at any one time, persistence of vision making it seem like the full screen was illuminated). An X-Ray tube operates on a similar principle, except the beam of electrons strikes a metal target, causing the emission of X-rays. A particle accelerator is a device, just like an X-ray tube or CRT, that uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate electrons and protons so they collide with each other or a target, and this liberates other particles which can then be detected. By observing and analysing the behaviour of the emitted particles, fundamental knowledge can be gained about the nature of matter. Our only Nobel laureate for physics, Ernest Walton and his colleague John Cockcroft were involved in this type of research in the 1930s, described at the time by the media as "splitting the atom". A synchrotron like the LHC is a type of particle accelerator that uses massive electromagnets to accelerate protons to close to the speed of light. The advantage of the accelerator being circular, unlike linear accelerators, is that particles can be given a boost in speed as they repeatedly circulate in the tube. Eventually when a certain velocity is reached, two beams travelling in opposite directions are collided and the dynamics of the "fragments" of the collision are studied.

More information in this RTÉ news report:

 

Also this, "Remembering Ernest Walton: Splitting the Atom".