Latest news with #Cern
Times
12-05-2025
- Science
- Times
Alchemists rejoice as Cern turns lead into gold — for a flash
In a quiet coup for physics, scientists have achieved what generations of alchemists could only dream of: turning lead into gold. The feat was achieved not in a dark medieval laboratory, but inside the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) and buried deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the LHC is perhaps the largest and most complex machine yet built. The transmutation, detailed in a paper published in Physical Review Journals, was a side-effect of a high-energy experiment in which two beams of lead atoms were smashed together at close to the speed of light. • Scientists split over successor to Large Hadron Collider As they screamed past each other, three protons were
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Stars lend glamour to ‘Oscars of science' Breakthrough Prizes
Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Keys and Lizzo were among the stars giving science some pizzazz at this year's Breakthrough Prizes in Los Angeles on Saturday. Nicknamed the 'Oscars of Science', the six awards of $3 million (£2.3 million) each are given for advances in life sciences, physics and mathematics. Some of the biggest names in tech, film and music walked the red carpet in Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, lending their glamour to the event. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos all flashed a smile, despite a torrid week in which their companies lost billions in the market turmoil caused by Donald Trump's tariff announcements. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 94, was pictured with his wife Elena Zhukova, 67, whom he married last summer. His third wife, Wendi Murdoch, 56, was also in attendance. Other attendees included Zoe Saldana, the Oscar-winning actress, Paris Hilton, the socialite, Gal Gadot, the star of Disney's ill-fated Snow White remake, and Lily Collins, the Emily in Paris actress. Musicians Lizzo, Katy Perry, Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera also came. The scientists who developed Ozempic, the pioneering weight-loss drug, were awarded a Breakthrough Prize. Another went to David Liu, an American molecular biologist, for developing two precise gene editing tools to help people with severe genetic diseases. A further life science prize was given for groundbreaking research on multiple sclerosis. More than 13,500 researchers from Cern, Europe's particle physics laboratory, took home a joint award for testing the modern theory of particle physics. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded in 2012 and are sponsored by Yuri Milner, a Russian–Israeli billionaire, and tech entrepreneurs including Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta. This year's prizes were given at a fraught moment for US science, as Donald Trump's government stripped funding for institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'The NIH is a treasure, not just for this country but for the world,' said Mr Liu, after winning his award. 'Trying to dismantle the heart of what supports science in this country is like burning your seed corn.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Stars lend glamour to ‘Oscars of science' Breakthrough Prizes
Gwyneth Paltrow, Alicia Keys and Lizzo were among the stars giving science some pizzazz at this year's Breakthrough Prizes in Los Angeles on Saturday. Nicknamed the 'Oscars of Science', the six awards of $3 million (£2.3 million) each are given for advances in life sciences, physics and mathematics. Some of the biggest names in tech, film and music walked the red carpet in Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, lending their glamour to the event. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos all flashed a smile, despite a torrid week in which their companies lost billions in the market turmoil caused by Donald Trump's tariff announcements. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 94, was pictured with his wife Elena Zhukova, 67, whom he married last summer. His third wife, Wendi Murdoch, 56, was also in attendance. Other attendees included Zoe Saldana, the Oscar-winning actress, Paris Hilton, the socialite, Gal Gadot, the star of Disney's ill-fated Snow White remake, and Lily Collins, the Emily in Paris actress. Musicians Lizzo, Katy Perry, Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera also came. The scientists who developed Ozempic, the pioneering weight-loss drug, were awarded a Breakthrough Prize. Another went to David Liu, an American molecular biologist, for developing two precise gene editing tools to help people with severe genetic diseases. A further life science prize was given for groundbreaking research on multiple sclerosis. More than 13,500 researchers from Cern, Europe's particle physics laboratory, took home a joint award for testing the modern theory of particle physics. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded in 2012 and are sponsored by Yuri Milner, a Russian–Israeli billionaire, and tech entrepreneurs including Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta. This year's prizes were given at a fraught moment for US science, as Donald Trump's government stripped funding for institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 'The NIH is a treasure, not just for this country but for the world,' said Mr Liu, after winning his award. 'Trying to dismantle the heart of what supports science in this country is like burning your seed corn.'
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists reveal plan for even bigger particle collider to smash atoms
Scientists at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could help solve some of the remaining enigmas of physics. The plans for the Future Circular Collider: a nearly 57-mile loop along the French-Swiss border and even below Lake Geneva, published late on Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. The study lays out features like the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and cost of the project. Independent experts will take a look before Cern's two-dozen member countries – all European except for Israel – decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about £12.5 billion). Cern officials have touted the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in areas like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind. Outside experts pointed to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang. 'This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,' said Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, in an email. The new collider 'provides and exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,' said Prof Toback, who was not affiliated with the study, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011. For roughly a decade, top minds at Cern have been cooking up plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 17-mile underground tunnel and slams them together at velocities approaching the speed of light. Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson – the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe. Cern scientists, engineers and partners behind the study considered at least 100 different scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed circumference at an average depth of 200 metres. The tunnel would be about five metres in diameter, Cern said. 'Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,' said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. 'When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.' A bigger collider would also offer greater precision to help plumb particularities of the Higgs boson, which 'we have kind of a blurry image of' now, he added.
The Guardian
29-03-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘The physics community has never split like this': row erupts over plans for new Large Hadron Collider
Scientists are refining plans to build the world's biggest machine at a site beneath the Swiss-French border. More than $30bn (£23bn) would be spent drilling a 91km circular tunnel in which subatomic particles would be accelerated to near light speeds and smashed into each other. From the resulting nuclear debris, scientists hope they will then find clues that would help them understand the detailed makeup of the universe. It is an extraordinarily ambitious project. However, it is also a controversial one – for many scientists fear the machine, the Future Circular Collider (FCC), could soak up funding for subatomic physics for decades and leave promising new research avenues starved of resources. Others argue that the mega-collider is being imposed on physicists by senior officials at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, without properly consulting researchers. 'I'm amazed to see how they are lining up this concept,' particle physicist Halina Abramowicz of Tel Aviv University told the Observer. 'This is not how things are supposed to work. The physics community is supposed to tell Cern what should be the next step, not the other way round.' These arguments have led the journal Nature to warn this month that 'a battle is under way for the future of particle physics'. Its analysis of the views of dozens of leading physicists revealed that many were critical of the proposed collider and warned it could trigger dangerous divisions between groups. As Prof Ruben Saakyan of University College London told the journal: 'The [physics] community was never split like this before.' For its part, Cern says that the FCC offers scientists a chance to undertake 'a unique exploration of space, time and matter'. Since its formation in 1954, the organisation – which is based in Geneva – has become a much-lauded example of the effectiveness of international scientific cooperation and has earned itself a reputation for generating world-leading research over the decades. Its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – currently the world's biggest machine – revealed the existence, in 2012, of the Higgs particle. This was the first direct evidence that a field – known as the Higgs field – permeates the universe and is responsible for giving different fundamental particles their various masses. However, the LHC is scheduled for closure by 2040 and many puzzles about the structure of the universe remain unsolved, despite hopes it would provide more major insights. Persisting mysteries include the nature of dark matter, whose existence is inferred from its gravitational influences on galaxies but whose exact makeup is unknown. Similarly, the fact that our universe is made up of matter – while antimatter is virtually nonexistence – cannot be explained from current observations. To get round these problems, Cern has proposed building its new mega-collider, which would be a much more powerful and much bigger version of the LHC. It would be built in two stages. The first would generate Higgs particles in vast numbers in order to understand their critical role in influencing other fundamental forces and would come online around 2040. Then it would be repurposed after a couple of decades so that it could collide protons at vast energies and provide new data about the universe. This version would begin operations around 2070. However, the technology to accelerate protons at the unsurpassed energies proposed for the FCC does not exist yet. It is merely assumed that, in 40 years' time, it will have been developed. Such an assumption worries some scientists, as well as the fact that the FCC will cost so much that it will lock scientists into a device that would monopolise funds for particle physics for decades. 'What worries me most is that, by investing all this money, we will be stopping the development of other technologies because there will be no money for them. The FCC could soak up funds for years and years,' said Abramowicz ,who dismissed the idea of the mega-collider as 'a toy' that could certainly not be guaranteed to fix the holes that exist in current theories. Instead, researchers have suggested that linear accelerators – which would fire particles in straight lines – might prove to be cheaper, more flexible and more likely to achieve results than a circular collider. This point was backed by Jenny List, a researcher based at the German accelerator centre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. 'There are other technologies on the horizon that could be used to accelerate particles like the proton without needing huge magnets or tunnels,' she said. 'Plasma wave technology is one of these. Current devices are small, but within 20 years or so we could find they are ready to use to run a big collider.' However, if the FCC were given the go-ahead, it could lock up funds for decades and end up dictating the direction that particle physics will have to take for much of the century, List added. 'We will be telling future generations exactly what to do scientifically, and so we need to ask ourselves today: who are we to decide what our grandchildren should research and not research?'
