The Globe: Exhibitions and Events

Globe of Science and Innovation
Route de Meyrin, 1211 Geneva

Conference
Nano materials: small dimensions, big opportunities
Thursday 22 November at 8.00 p.m.
Christoph Renner, Professor of Physics and Deputy Director of MaNEP*

Information technologies have developed at an incredible pace over the past sixty years. Mobile phones, MP3 players and other modern gizmos are infinitely more powerful than the first computers, which took up whole rooms! The main driving force behind this evolutionary process has been the boom in the miniaturisation of electronic components. The latest technological innovations have led to a new range of tools being developed, allowing matter to be visualised, manipulated and characterised at the smallest possible scales, molecule by molecule and even atom by atom. At these scales, the behaviour of matter is altered as the conventional properties of mass are gradually taken over by quantum effects with which we are quite unfamiliar in our everyday lives. In harnessing materials at the atomic level, we open up fascinating new scientific and technological vistas that will be illustrated using examples from the biomedical world and the physical sciences.

* National pole of research on new electronic materials.

CERN is soon to commission the world’s most powerful accelerator, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which will provide us with new insights into the Universe and how it evolved. This series of lectures is all about understanding the scientific and technological challenges of this phenomenal project and assessing its innovations through their everyday applications. Come and take a sneak preview of the LHC!

Share: leading-edge technology at the service of society
Thursday 29 November, 8:00 p.m.
Jean-Marie Le Goff, physicist and head of technology transfer at CERN

The technologies used by the LHC are already finding applications in other scientific fields, such as medicine, climatology, metrology and computer science. Through its ground-breaking technologies, particle physics benefits society as a whole.

Lectures are free and require no specialist knowledge. In French.
By reservation only: tel. +41 (0)22 767 76 76 - Fax: 022 767 87 10 - visits.service@cern.ch

Forthcoming Globe events: www.cern.ch/globe/