From the CERN web: antihydrogen, ROOT, protons and more
This section highlights articles, blog posts and press releases published in the CERN web environment over the past weeks. This way, you won’t miss a thing...
A top quark candidate in the CMS detector. (Image: CMS Collaboration).Where no-one has gone before
30 September – CMS Collaboration
Born at the end of the ’70s, I was still in school when the heaviest of all quarks was discovered at the Tevatron: the top quark. Back then I had no idea what it was about. But reading an article in the newspaper I felt the excitement surrounding such a discovery. My interest for the smallest and most basic building blocks of the universe had been awakened. When I joined the CMS Collaboration in 2014, I had no doubt that the first measurement I would like to do was that of the production rates of top-quark pairs at the new energy regime of 13 TeV. Shortly after the restart of the LHC in summer this year, we began a journey where no-one has gone before.
The ALPHA experiment, one of five experiments that are studying antimatter at CERN.Antihydrogen at CERN: 20 years and still going strong
29 September – by Harriet Jarlett
Twenty years ago a team of scientists at CERN led by Walter Oelert succeeded in producing the first atoms made of antimatter particles.
The nine atoms of antihydrogen – the antimatter counterpart of the simplest atom, hydrogen – were made at CERN’s Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) facility. This world premiere happened exactly 30 years after the discovery of the antiproton and opened a new chapter in the study of antimatter.
Big data takes ROOT
29 September – by Barbara Warmbein
Particle physicists don’t break into a sweat when they face big data. On the contrary: they need it in order to be able to tell a rare process from a common one. Reliable statistics are essential here, and physicists gather statistics by producing as many particle collisions as possible. At the LHC, protons collide some 1 billion times per second, and the CERN data centre stores more than 30 petabytes of data per year from the LHC experiments.
Image: DESY.
The most precise picture of the proton
25 September – CERN Courier
After 15 years of measurements and another eight years of analysis and calculations, the H1 and ZEUS collaborations have published the most precise results to date about the innermost structure and behaviour of the proton.
The diagrams show the neutral-current (top) and charged-current (bottom) deep-inelastic electron–proton scattering processes.
A member of the CERN flock grazes on the roof of the Intersecting Storage Rings.The birds and the beams: Biodiversity at CERN
22 September – by Cian O’Luanaigh
It's 7am at CERN and sheep are grazing on the roof of the world's first hadron collider.
Though the Intersecting Storage Rings have lain dormant since 1984, this morning the air resonates with the sound of bells and bleating as shepherd Enrico D'Ippolito inoculates his herd. Kin, the 3-year-old border collie, jumps against makeshift metal gates, whining and snapping to keep the ewes moving. “They're very sweet-natured,” grins D'Ippolito. “And they keep me busy!”
