A bit of the LHC in the mairies

As partners in the Organization’s Open Days, the communes will be given a present that is very symbolic of CERN.

On Saturday, 5 April, CERN will be offering its personnel and their families preview visits to the LHC before the general public is admitted the following day. The mayors and deputy mayors of each partner commune will inaugurate the various tour routes. A CERN delegation will take the opportunity to offer the mayors a unique present to thank them for their invaluable cooperation: a 60 cm diameter section of a dipole magnet weighing almost 10 kg. The choice of present is no coincidence. It is highly symbolic since the dipoles are at the very heart of the LHC project. Each section is a faithful replica of a slice of one of the 1232 LHC dipole magnets which will be used to guide the particles around the ring. The dipoles alone occupy almost 18 km of the 27 km LHC tunnel. They are composed of superconducting cables, consisting of niobium-titanium strands with a coating of copper, which will take the current to 12’000 amps.