Data are the currency of physics. As data accumulate, measurement uncertainty ranges narrow up to a certain point, increasing the potential for discoveries and making non-observations more stringent, with more far-reaching consequences. In collider…

The Collide@CERN Artist-in-Residence programme is currently seeking CERN scientists interested in engaging in thought-provoking and creative collaborations with visiting artists. In early 2012, a Digital artist will take up a 2-month residency…

Hundreds of millions of collisions per second -- Detectors collecting data to analyse 24/7 : the LHC and its experiements generate millions of gigabytes of data. The Computing Grid, a huge, worldwide network of computers was invented to manage,…

Recently I participated in my second Science Hack Day (SHD), in San Francisco in November 2011. What is a Science Hack Day, you ask? According to primary organiser Ariel Waldman: “The mission of Science Hack Day is to get excited and make things…

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